Stories from Deli

Coolies: ‘A Sad History of Suffering and Injustice’, W. Dharmowijono. Van koelies, klontongs en kapiteins : het beeld van de Chinezen in Indisch-Nederlands literair proza 1880-1950

Preface

A „coolie‟ is explained in the Dictionary der Nederlandsche Taal as a colored worker, used in the East and West Indies for all kinds of services, especially for heavy physical work. In particular, the word designates the workers who work in agricultural, mining and industrial enterprises.

On a plantation, the Chinese supervisor, who himself was also a coolie, is called „tandil‟. An indigenous overseer was called “mandur”. Very exceptionally it happened that a Javanese woman became a mandur. The supervisors acted as mediators between the management and the workers.

There are four kinds of Chinese coolies in the literary prose that will be discussed: those who worked on the plantations, in the mines, in the city, and in the so-called panglongs, meaning logging and charcoal distilleries. We are talking about coolies on Sumatra and Kalimantan (formerly called Borneo). Coolies did not occur in Java, unless they meant beginning klontongs who carried their own merchandise. If a klontong could afford a carrier, that carrier was a Javanese and not Chinese. In Sumatra, especially in the city of Medan, many Chinese made a living pulling a rickshaw. They were often also called „coolies‟. The plantation coolies worked on tobacco or rubber plantations in East Sumatra. The tobacco plantations produced the world famous Deli tobacco. The mine coolies worked in the tin mines of Bangka (in Dutch spelling: Banka), Belitung (Billiton) and other islands such as Singkep. These miners, their history and the literature written about them, as well as the Chinese gold miners in West Kalimantan (the former Wester division in Borneo), were discussed in a previous subchapter. The panglongs were located on the east coast of Sumatra and were all under the control of Chinese.

From the middle of the second half of the nineteenth century onwards, plantation and mining cools were brought in from abroad, first from Singapore and Malacca, then from China itself. The great majority consisted of Hakkas and Teochius. According to an estimate by the historian Victor Purcell, who has written extensively about China and the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, there were about 200,000 Hakkas in the area where the 1930 census was conducted, 45,000 of whom lived in Bangka and Belitung and worked 14,000 on the plantations in East Sumatra. Most of the miners on Belitung were Chinese-born Hakkas who embarked at the four main departure ports in South China: Hong Kong, Canton (now Guangzhou), Amoy (Xiamen) and Swatow (Shantou) . The numbers of the Teochius are not mentioned. They usually worked in tobacco plantations and were apparently particularly suitable for this. There was also an important group of Cantonese miners in Bangka.

Historical background

In this overview, attention will mainly be paid to the history of the tobacco plantations and the tobacco coolies in East Sumatra in particular. For the overview, the most important source is Coolies, Planters and Colonial Politics (1987), the dissertation of Jan Breman, an expert on industrial relations in Asia. The second edition, which I read, was published in 1992. Attached to the treatise are two writings, The Millions from Deli by Mr. J. van den Brand (1902) in which all kinds of abuses on the plantations are denounced, and the report by JTL Rhemrev (1903), Public Prosecutor, of an investigation that was assigned to him in response to Van den Brand’s indictment . The history of the coolies in Sumatra is known to few people and will therefore be discussed in detail.

 The plantations in East Sumatra

However different from the mining coolies on Bangka, the condition of the plantation coolies in East Sumatra was not much better. Breman’s book was published, as stated in the second edition, in which responses to the first edition are included, „at a time when the colonial past seemed to be looked back with gentleness and benevolence‟ and was therefore out of place. According to Breman, readers who had allowed themselves to be guided by the nostalgic tempo-doeloe imagery of the time could „only‟ react with skepticism or even hostility. The writer of a letter sent to NRC Handelsblad accused Breman of acting unscientifically by stirring up excesses that had occurred so long ago. These concerned the mistreatment of coolies on Sumatra’s East coast (subsequently: SOK), especially on the tobacco plantations.

Breman accuses the authorities of the time of reluctance to take note of the downside of this part of the colonial business, namely the suffering of the Asian working people on large agricultural enterprises under Western leadership. The picture as it has emerged in conventional historiography is “permeated with tribute to Dutch and other European planters-pioneers who with unprecedented decisiveness and perseverance have turned the Asian jungle into prosperous agricultural areas”. The tenor of this ‘what-was-what-was-performed’ epic is, according to Breman’s argument, the colonial version of what is nowadays considered

‘True development policy’ would be touted. In the literature, too, the image of the planter pioneers as heroes or, in the words of essayist Rudy Kousbroek, the reader

There was no critical reappraisal of public opinion about the reality overseas. What there was, on the contrary, was ‘repression of reality’. 11 Even a century later, excuses were still sought and found for the events in Deli. Breman cannot escape the impression that the excuses are more the result of the need for condoning than of the desire to serve objectivity by applying nuances. The fact that Jacob Nienhuys, the founder of the Deli Maatschappij, had to leave the east coast of Sumatra in a hurry to avoid a charge of whipping seven coolies to death, is justified because it occurred during the mining years, which had been extremely violent. Breman’s contention, however, is that such atrocities did not only occur during the pioneer years, but also later in the nineteenth century.

According to Breman’s view, the abuses and terror demonstrated by Rhemrev fit into a pattern of racism that had permeated colonial society at the turn of the century. The termination of the employment contract, which Asians entered into ‘of their own free will’ according to the official representation a state-sanctioned monetary sanction. Added to this was the daily dose of punches and kicks, and worse still, that white bosses administered to workers.

Only later did it dawn on employers that better treatment of workers was attractive from an economic point of view and, conversely, arose under the

Initially, art. 25 of the Surabaya Police Regulations of 1829 imposes a penalty on wage servants (i.e. domestic servants, Breman 1992, p. 55) who left their service without the knowledge of the service user. Gradually, such a provision was declared applicable to the whole of Java and Madura (in 1851, Breman 1992, p. 55) and in 1872 it became applicable through an amendment to the Alg. Police Penalty Regulations to the breaking of all work agreements and extended to the whole of India. A ruling of the House of Representatives in 1879 forced the Indian government to repeal this provision, but gave it the freedom in 1880 to promulgate the first coolie ordinance, for Sumatra’s East coast, based on the poenal sanction and for two categories. of labor was: for those from outside the Indies (for example the Chinese) and for those from within the archipelago but from outside the region where they were employed (for example the Javanese). The other regions outside Java and Madura gradually received their coolie ordinances.

In 1900, however, the fight against the monetary sanction began, first only on the private side, from 1918 also on behalf of the Indian government and from 1924 also on the side of the Lower House. In 1931, the various regional coolie ordinances were merged into a general coolie ordinance, which, however, also prescribed a gradual abolition of the poenal sanction. The abolition of the monetary sanction was considerably accelerated by the decision, taken by the management of the Deli tobacco companies shortly after the acceptance of the 1931 refrigeration ordinance, not to conclude employment contracts under monetary sanctions, in order to avoid possible difficulties for the import of Avoid deli tobacco in the United States. (The financial sanction was thus abolished not for humanitarian, but for economic reasons. This decision and the downsizing of almost all corporate cultures in the 1930s were the signal to end the financial sanction across the board, with the result that by the end of 1940 only 1.9 percent of the coolie population, mainly Chinese , was working under monetary sanction. The government could therefore proceed without objection and protest with effect from 1 January 1942 to abolish the monetary sanction by repealing the coolie ordinance of 1931.

workers a certain acceptance of the basic rules on which capitalist management was based. As for the so-called ethical policy, in practice it came up against the conviction of many authorities that the Asian could only be brought to progress with a heavy hand, and so labor force remained the basis of the plantation system in Sumatra. The Labor Inspectorate, set up to protect the workers, became an instrument in the conditioning of the coolies according to the wishes and needs of the entrepreneurs. It thus functioned as an ally of plantation capitalism.

Only 5 percent of the workforce on Sumatran plantations was not bound by a contract in 1920. Physical violence was an extension of forced labor. The use of violence was and is condoned; it would not be the European planters who maltreated the coolies until death, but the Chinese or Javanese foremen. That is „a view that is in line with the well-known stereotype according to which the controlled harshness of the Westerner has to make up for the more intrinsic cruelty of oriental peoples,‟ Breman argues. That defense was used to emphasize the civilizing effect that colonialism would produce. According to Breman, the relationship between planter and coolie steeped in violence constituted an extreme variant of the enslavement of colonized labor under Dutch rule. Submission took on the character of an adapted modern form of slavery on the plantations; the relationship of superior boss and inferior servant was based on the racist ideology that characterized colonial society.

The Poenale sanction, which was only abolished in 1942, had many supporters, including, according to Breman, the writer A. Alberts, who was employed as deputy inspector on the island of Madura for the domestic administration in the Dutch East Indies. Alberts presents the monetary sanction as unavoidable, resulting from the indigenous population’s reluctance to allow themselves to be pressured to work on the large farms. Later, Breman writes, colonialism was looked back on and complacency was mixed with melancholy because the reconstruction work in the tropics had come to an end, annoyance because the job had been cut off prematurely and self-pity because appreciation for the efforts made 19

The brochure of J. van den Brand

The brochure The Millions from Deli by Mr. Almost half a century after Multatuli’s Max Havelaar, J. van den Brand, a lawyer in Medan, sent a shiver through the Netherlands again, says Breman. Shortly before the publication of the brochure, on March 29, 1902, Van den Brand spoke at a meeting in Medan in which there was a discussion about the pros and cons of forced labor on behalf of the large agricultural enterprises. Van den Brand condemned the coolie ordinance on moral grounds.

Why was there so much fuss about the brochure? After all, Van den Brand’s accusations were not new, coolie scandals were regularly discussed in the House of Representatives. Breman sees a first reason in the development of a new course in politics at that time, namely the pursuit of a welfare policy. According to him, other reasons should be sought in the content and scope of the brochure itself. Not only were the incidents reported, but a cause was also found in the operation of the indentured labor system itself. Besides the fact that the text had literary sharpness and brilliance, the tone of the tract was also religious, appealing to the Christian conscience of the Dutch people. In the end, Van den Brand turned not only against the employers but also against the colonial administration, which he accused of making common cause with the planters. Van den Brand denounced the effect of the coolie ordinance with monetary sanction and its use by the authorities in the region. The contract that Chinese and Javanese workers concluded with receipt of an advance and that obliged them to work for three years contained a number of binding provisions stipulating the details of the performance to be delivered. There were penalties for violations, penalties imposed by civil servants acting as magistrates at the same time.

Van den Brand gave a detailed picture of the terror and exploitation to which the working people were exposed. Using several headlines, he illustrated his tract with in-text printouts of advertisements taken from local newspapers, offering workers and, in the same advertisement, slaughter and draft cattle.

The planters reproached the brochure. They accused Van den Brand of wanting to destroy the flourishing cultural area of ​​SOK. The former resident of the region thought Van den Brand’s stories were grossly exaggerated. But after only a few weeks the brochure was sold out and a second edition was published.25 In 1903 Van den Brand published a sequel: Again: The Millions from Deli. An official investigation was started. Prosecutor

JLT Rhemrev, of the Council of Justice, was ordered to open an administrative inquiry into the beatings and illegal imprisonment of the coolies. Rhemrev arrived in Medan in mid-1903, and by the end of the year he had finished his research. 26

The Rhemrev Report

Van den Brand had not exaggerated. Rhemrev found conditions far worse than anyone else had ascertained or suspected. There appeared to be a system by which the violence took place, but what was remarkable was the fact that the observed practices could remain hidden from the outside world. “A sad history of suffering and injustice,” wrote the colonial minister, AWF Idenburg, on the first page of the report. But no steps were taken. The House accepted the minister’s promise that he would take measures to end the identified abuses in the coolie work in Deli. Later it could be concluded that the tendency to label ‘. Van den Berg 1987b.

23 The latter did not prevent „tropical journalist‟ Karel Wybrands from heavily criticizing Van den Brand as a „modern Elia without practice‟ and The millions from Deli as „thoroughly dishonest,‟

coolie scandals marked the end of the pioneering era and the beginning of profound changes. But what had happened in the past had to remain covered with the mantle of love, according to Breman. Later colonial authors, even those wishing to write a history that would take away the image of coolies and Deli millions, were denied permission to take note of the results of Rhemrev’s research.27

Publications that Breman consulted for his research had the character of a planter epic, ‘a glorification of what Western entrepreneurial spirit was able to do in tropical Asia’. The reason for this was not far off: many authors were former planters themselves or had held a position in the Deli Planters Vereeniging, at the East Sumatra Institute or at the Tobacco Office.28 It is notable that many administrators were already in possession of Rhemrev before the arrival of Rhemrev. left for Europe.

An example of violence against coolies reported in Van den Brands Millioenen van Deli and in the Rhemrev report is the following. At a small business, the writer saw five Chinese who ran away but had been arrested again. They lay side by side on a mat on the floor, all on their stomachs. On their back was a piece of white goods. Their backs and they were completely covered with wounds caused by blows with bamboo 3 to 4 cm in diameter, „making the most cruel wounds‟. That was their punishment for running away. The report mentions violence after violence against coolies, not only on Chinese but also on Javanan, not only on men but also on women.

The origin of the plantation society

The Agrarian Law of 1870 marked the end of the Cultural System in Java and the transition to a period of liberalism, and also indicated the direction of the new politics, namely making natural resources accessible to capital interests from the motherland.30

J. Nienhuys is considered the founder of the tobacco cultivation to which SOK owes its world fame. He came to Deli in 1863 to establish himself as an entrepreneur. The myth that he almost single-handedly turned the jungle that surrounded him into neat tobacco gardens is not entirely true, according to Breman.31 Earlier, the Sultan of Deli had sent a certain Said Abdullah to Java to look for buyers of the 30,000 pikul tobacco that according to him, the population produced annually and to announce that his client was prepared to give land to interested parties for the cultivation of this crop.32 One of the people who came to this was Nienhuys. In The Earth from Deli (1948), Willem Brandt gives a strongly romanticized picture of this early beginning of the Deli plantations. Nienhuys used this, according to Breman, deception and deception in securing land in Deli in 1866. He deceived not only the local population but also the colonial officials.

In the search for workers, the Bataks and Malays were found unfit or refused to do wage labor. Nienhuys then succeeded in engaging 120 Chinese coolies in Penang. They came to sleep in his house because there was no other accommodation. The first inspector appointed in Deli in 1864 also took up residence with Nienhuys for the time being. Besides the Chinese, several hundred Klingaleese from the coast of Coromandel in British India, Siamese and Javanese were employed.

The first Europeans to settle as planters had to do without the protection of colonial rule. The expansion of Dutch rule over Sumatra took place very gradually and cautiously, shifting from the south and west of the island. The British flag flew in places on Siak on the East Coast. Commercial ties with Penang, where Chinese traders played a prominent role, were close, and the Dutch feared that through these Chinese British influence would expand further. This was the decisive argument for the occupation of SOK by the Netherlands.

In 1872 only about 75 Europeans lived in the region, mostly planters. The number of plantations increased from 13 in 1873 to 23 in 1874 and to 40 in 1876. In 1876 there were 7,600 Chinese coolies. So there were, on average, less than 200 Chinese coolies working on a company at the time

Nienhuys returned to the Netherlands in 1870 and assigned J. Th. Cremer, a young man of 24 years, as his successor. This allowed the Deli Maatschappij to flourish in the following decades. From 1870 to 1883 he increased the production from 1,315 to 22,000 packs of tobacco (158 kg per pack), the capital grew from 300,000 to 2 million guilders and the annual profit averaged 73 percent.

The staff

In the beginning, the head of a crew of Chinese workers (kongsi) acted as a contractor, was assigned a plot of land and took all the seedlings to sell them to his client as mature plants at the end of the cycle. About 1870 the planters began to contract directly with each worker individually.

Only European entrepreneurs could apply for a land concession, not the Chinese. Chinese traders were already in the early years ready to focus on the cultivation of cash crops (tobacco, coconut, nutmeg), but that was not appreciated by the Western planters. Chinese didn’t like the option use it to grow commercial crops, they were only allowed to establish themselves as greengrocer or pig breeder.

After harvesting, the land was returned to the population for another season for rice cultivation and then left untouched for a period of 8 to 10 years.

On a company or kebon, the emplacement or establishment was the centerpiece, formed by the administration offices, the fermentation shed, the houses of the European staff, the hangars in which the coolies were housed, the shop or kedei (also written as kedeh) and Chinese temple , the stables and other farm buildings. Most striking was the bungalow in which the administrator (the tuan besar or great lord) resided, in a central location but at the same time inaccessible to the working people, entirely in accordance with the social relations in the company. By the end of the nineteenth century there was no longer a planter-owner, but a manager-manager (the toean maskapai, sometimes spelled differently like many other corruptions from Dutch), appointed by a foreign-based management.

The staff was very heterogeneous in descent, but Indo-Europeans had little chance of being included. ] father) was deliberately thrown to the wolves.42 Only white staff members who eventually returned to the motherland could join the company management. Assistants had to have a good body structure and a steady will. More importantly, they showed an unconditional obedience „upwards‟ and the ability to discipline the workers „downwards‟. An assistant was 22-25 years old when deployed. Many of them were failures and the black sheep of their families. The image that emerged of the assistants was that of inexperienced,

The assistants were not allowed to marry during the first six years of their stay. Later this changed, but in practice the unmarried status of the novice assistants continued. Only from 1922 was it forbidden to include such a ban on marriage in the employment contract of the assistants. Breman does not consider it unlikely that the management of the companies was guided in its appointment policy by the consideration that the young assistant without family obligations

Would act ‘more energetically’ against the workforce than older employees who would show greater thoughtfulness for fear of their safety.

The corps of staff on the plantations grew from 46 clerks and 69 employees in 1876 to 403 clerks and 1953 employees in 1929. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, assistants were performing duties initially performed by overseers recruited from the coolies themselves . The background to this change was the desire of the management to strengthen control over the company’s operations

The overseers

The tandil and mandur, as the supervisors were called, acted as intermediaries between the management and the workers. The companies had early left the recruitment of coolies to commercial offices located in Penang or Singapore for coolies recruited on the Overwal (the Straits). Later on, South China and Java emerged as supply areas and more and more use was made of yard offices in the ports located there. They had their own network of agents in the hinterland. Breman thinks that the coolies did not leave as an undifferentiated mass, but that there was already a sort of selection of leaders in the recruiting place. The supervisors had a great interest in the expansion and replacement of the workforce, not only because they had such a large possibly wanted to be part of the commission paid, but also because they wanted to get a grip on the newcomers who entered the plantations. The Chinese head toothils gave money to intermediaries, kheh-taus, who were confidants of the head tandils, to recruit coolies. In the struggle between the Chinese secret societies to conquer hegemony over the coolie population, the main tandils and tandils played a prominent role. The colonial government acted vigorously against those societies. The colonial government acted vigorously against those societies. 

The overseer held a key position due to his reasonable familiarity with the language of his superiors. He was also given room to discipline his team, as this prevented a direct confrontation between the assistant and his coolies. He was thus in the real sense of the word a mediator who could be assured of a more lenient treatment in the assistant’s actions. For example, he should not be insulted in front of his coolies, as that would mean loss of face and the coolies would lose awe of their mandur or tandil, with the result that they could become bolder in their actions so that the overseer would have more trouble to make oneself obey. On the one hand, an overseer used terror to discipline his crew, but he also took care of his crew and was able to enjoy the respectful affection of his subordinates.

A supervisor thus fulfilled a dual role, namely as a confidant of his superiors and at the same time representative of the crew of workers with whom he worked daily. He dressed and behaved differently, to put it in the words of W. Westerman, quoted by Breman: he “wore a grotesque European hat, a pair of oversized shoes and a stick, and he could also shout well”. The general view was that a Chinese would be impressed by the latter and there namely, as a confidant of his superiors and at the same time representative of the team of workers with whom he worked daily. 

The superintendent stayed in the shed where the coolies (30-40 people) were housed and he was responsible for maintaining peace and order. Mandur often ran a small trade, forcing the coolies to buy above market value. In the meantime, they make small loans among the members of their team. As a result, the coolies often started the New Year with an old debt. The foreman did not receive a fixed salary, but a commission of 7.5 percent of the earnings of his team. 

The tandil was answerable to the chief tandil, who in turn had the task of gathering information about all that was going on among the working people. He had to report this directly to the clerk, who regarded him as his right-hand man. He didn’t exactly have to interfere with culture, but with Chinese affairs or perkaras. The little tandils had to keep him informed about the spirit that reigned among the coolies. These reports then had the main tandil checked again by his own spies, all this to avoid riots. In turn, the head mandil also had to report to the clerk about the activities of the assistants.

The superintendent received 5-7 percent of the picking wages of all the coolies on the plantation as a fixed part of his income, amounting to about $ 250 per year. In addition, there were various additional earnings, among others

„Gratitude money‟ in the form of a regular remittance from the supervisors: the support of the superintendent had to be bought, because he had made the appointment of the supervisor possible. On payday he received an amount of eight to ten thousand guilders. He also benefited from the opportunity he offered to practice the game of dice. To this end, he received a permit from a Chinese who owned the playing lease in the region. Likewise, he also got income from the opium sale. The superintendent was often a wealthy man whose power and prestige was known far beyond the company. Coolies did not give the name of the company they worked for, but that of the superintendent. The superintendents were in contact with each other to coordinate their interests. 

Administrator and assistants made a solemn visit to the Chinese head tandil twice a year. On Chinese New Year, he welcomed at home and lavishly welcomed his guests to a festive drink and exquisitely prepared Chinese pastry. When the Chinese wayang played, a visit was also made to the main toothil, which received his guests in the playhouse. Conversely, on December 31, the officials came to visit the administrator, and the Chinese head tandil reinforced his tribute demonstration by setting off a deafening fireworks display at midnight.

The usury of the supervisors often caused unrest among the workers, who had to hand over so much to their creditors on paydays that they did not have enough left over for their livelihoods. At the instigation of the foremen, they asked for the advances to be increased, but if this was not granted, they put down their work and run-ups arose. The planters were constantly showing fear for outbreaks of coolies. A more intimate personal relationship would be desirable, but according to Breman this was not possible because of the impossibility for a European assistant to master one of the Chinese dialects or Javanese. Mediation of the supervisors remained necessary. 56

In addition to the supervisors, the clerks or clerks who worked as writers at the company’s offices were between the workers and management. These were Chinese from Penang, where they had been educated, and further combinations of different races including European. In that case they were called „halfcasts‟ or „Sinjos‟. They were an indispensable part of the plantation business for the day-to-day business. Breman seems likely that these people, in collaboration with the supervisors, were the executors of ‘all kinds of unauthorized actions to the detriment of the working people, an alliance of which European staff members were also part as even more secretive partners.’

The coolies

The working people did not form a homogeneous mass, but consisted of different sections. Firstly, these were the field coolies that were allocated a field for the cultivation of tobacco plants. The quantity and especially the quality of the production depended on their effort. He was the actual tobacco grower who worked under the tendering system (borongan). The zeal of the Chinese coolie has been spoken and written with much appreciation, as, for example, in the following quote by CJ Dixon, author of The Assistant at Deli: Practical Remarks Regarding Dealings with Coolies, which Breman has included in his book.

Before dawn, the Chinese field coolie is already outside to care for its young tobacco, to water the seed beds, to look for caterpillars of its tobacco, or to prepare the land for planting. He is at work until after sunset, with only a few hours of rest in the afternoon. It is also not uncommon for the coolies to be busy in their tobacco on bright moon evenings, long after their normal working hours with a hard day’s work behind them. A Chinese may not be a sympathetic workman because of his loud and noisy behavior, but every planter must have respect for his unbelievable work power and work performance. 

Chinese indentured labours were preferred over Javanese by the management, not only because they were hard workers, but also because they were said to have traits more closely resembling those of their white masters: they were open to reason, but short-tempered like their sense of justice was mortified. Such a reaction was predictable, it was said, and could easily be controlled because forceful action has the desired effect, because in essence a Chinese would be cowardly.60 The latter may not be one of the traits of a European.

The field cooler was assisted by the kongsikang (literally: cooperation, also often written as congsicang), inexperienced forces who were entrusted with the preparatory earthwork and maintenance of the fields during the growth of the plants. Not only novices belonged to this category of auxiliary workers, but also coolies who were known to the management as unfit, lazy or reluctant. This gave kongsikang the meaning of a swear word. Because that name originally referred to the stinky leg wounds (sustained during heavy reclamation work) by which this class of inferior coolies could be recognized, they were also referred to by the planters as „stinkers‟. The meaning was lost but the name by which the planters expressed their contempt stuck.

The actual tobacco growers worked according to a system of adoption and were presented in planters’ sources as „free entrepreneurs‟. The auxiliary coolies could be promoted and were allocated a number of tobacco fields, from which they had to take care of and pick the plants. In other words, they became field cool. Supervisors had an important say in the chapter in the promotion. The workers came out different regions of China. Breman quotes Dixon talking about different ethnic groups, such as the Hailokhong who are loud, temper and short-tempered but hard workers, and the Keh and Macau who are calmer and more tolerant but also more unreliable and not as strong, but work more carefully and neatly. Some of them got a stamp in advance that their workforce left something to be desired. They were registered as second- or even third-rate coolies, and the Immigration Office also charged the companies a significantly lower price for these inferior categories.

In addition to field coolies, various other types of workers were present on the farms for clearing forests, cleaning the fields, building roads on the farm and digging ditches for drainage. This task was given to individual teams under their own foremen. These workers were much less tied to the enterprise than the field coolies. They were also not under a long-term contract. Still other cool crews were responsible for the construction of drying and fermentation barns, warehouses and barracks.

The Chinese had a reputation for being more diligent than the Javanese, but they were also more expensive. Because of their „indolence‟ the latter did not receive piece wages but daily wages

The local population, the Bataks and Malays from the coastal plain, were called upon from the beginning for logging and other reclamation work. Local farmers who refused to work on the plantation when their labor power was needed were denied access to the finished fields on which they could have grown their own food crops.

Each country (besides the Chinese are called Boyans, Klings, Bandjarezen and Siamese, Malays and Bataks) had a more or less specific work task. The Chinese remained the main workmen.65 Control over work was served by a variety of coolies, with a certain division between them.66

The image of the Chinese coolies was that a large part belonged to the “foam of the Chinese nation”. There was great division among them, which gave rise to disputes and fights among them, and it was therefore necessary that the enforcement of the discipline be done with a firm hand. The suggestion was that the planters punished more justly than the sultan, and moreover did so according to the custom and wishes of the Chinese themselves. According to this image, patriarchal power relations prevailed on the plantations which were beneficial to all. 67

The board used the planters to collect taxes. For the official registration of the contracts an amount of 1 guilder had to be paid, which the employers recovered from the coolies. Furthermore, because they belonged to the Strange Easterners, the coolies also had to pay company tax, “according to an iron logic”, according to Breman, which was deducted from their wages. The planters therefore concluded that the local government was there to enable them to run their business unhindered.68

A table of the arrival and departure of Chinese coolies from SOK from 1888-1900 shows that only a little less than 22 percent of the Chinese coolies left for China. If that were true, the large number of stayers would lead to a much faster growth of the Chinese population than in reality has been the case. Breman calculates that in 1900 no more than 40 percent of the number of Chinese coolies that had entered into an agreement in the previous twelve years were under contract to agricultural enterprises. Where was the rest? Only a small part remigrated, a handful remained on the company as free laborers without a contract, a larger number (but still small) found a life outside the plantation as a small self-employed person and in paid employment with a boss, and several more coolies had run away from the plantations and were hiding in the area, always fearing to be caught again. 

Breman argues that „the bias in historiography in favor of the plantocracy has formed an obstacle to the recognition of an extremely high mortality among the working people‟ .The heroic opening of the area, the difficult but continuous establishment of new plantations in still unexplored, swampy terrain, the diseases and irreparable exhaustion resulting from the relentless work regime, combined with poor nutrition and care, took the lives of large masses workers. No one, Breman said, counted those victims. He estimates that before the end of the nineteenth century, one in every three or four coolies died of SOK before he had served the contract.

More and more Javanese were employed at SOK. This was not so much because of the problems with recruiting coolies from China, but because the planters were given a more favorable view of the quality of the labor of the Javanese workers.74 This was in turn because new crops were imported, where the Javanese themselves suitable for tones. The advantage of Javanese workers was that they were calm and quiet, „a relief from the turbulence and thirst for rebellion attributed to Chinese workers‟, and they were cheaper, especially the women. Chinese coolies were much more likely to resist what they regarded as unfair treatment and did not simply follow directions from the company management. The Chinese women were completely unfit, with the wives of the other Chinese. In short, they were not as submissive as the Javanese women and had too much entrepreneurial spirit.

The Chinese government set minimum conditions: the opium kits had to be closed and dice banned, wages had to be increased significantly so that the coolies could transfer part of their earnings to relatives who were left behind. From 1931, no more Chinese coolies were recruited. 

The Javanese women led the most miserable affairs of all the coolies, they were most exposed to exploitation and oppression by the company management and overseers. According to the coolie ordinance, they were only allowed to be engaged for light work, but in fact that was not the case.78 Moreover, they received such a low wage that they were forced to prostitute themselves to stay alive. By the way, this was expected of them by the management: this extra income was included in the company calculation! 79 This is where the Chinese coolies come into the picture. Because these Javanese girls, Van den Brand noted, were imported „and sacrificed to the Chinese‟, supposedly in order to „fight the unnatural fornication among the Chinese‟ .80 For five cents at a time, a woman surrenders herself to a Chinese. To a sarong, an indispensable piece of clothing, which could be bought in the plantation’s clothing, a Javanese female coolie had to prostitute herself twenty times, calculates Van den Brand. Planters thought that was not something to be alarmed about, because the Javanese female coolies „are all whores by nature.‟ .81 In this light, the behavior of the Javanese female coolies in Székely-Lulofs’ novel, Coolie, is quite understandable. : they were looking for the best possible survival for the highest-paying coolies, and they were the Chinese.

The labor

The Coolie Ordinance stipulated that a working day on a tobacco plantation lasted ten hours. At 5 o’clock in the morning or earlier, the gong was sounded and there was a morning roll call, where the wardens reported which of their teams were missing and why. Only illness was a valid reason and even then the assistant often doubted the truth of the reason and the coolie still had to work. Work started at 5:30 or 6:00. There was a lunch break from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., then work had to be done again until 5.30 pm or 6 pm. In practice, a working day usually lasted 2 hours longer, because the workers were not allowed to stop if they had not yet completed their day’s work, and in determining this the assistants did not rely on the average, but on the maximum possible. The same happened to the piece-wage workers, because the rate was set so low that they had to work long hours to reach a minimum income. The overtime mainly happened during the midday break, but also at night the plucked leaves continued to be thrown in. the drying shed or with working in the gardens by moonlight or the glow of a kerosene lamp.

The planting of a medium-sized company consisted of approximately 400 fields, each slightly less than 1 building in size (1 building = 0.7 ha). That does not mean that the entire company was only 400 fields, because in a period of 8-10 years the company went around the entire area. Therefore, 2300-2800 ha of land had to be available. The 400 fields were divided into four of 100 fields each. Each department was headed by an assistant with three supervisors who employed a total of 100 men. The kongsikang came to the growers. Per department there were about 50 workers, mainly Javanese, who prepared the new reclamations in a shift under their own supervisors. They took care of the forest clearing, road construction, barn construction and the digging of ditches. A plantation of a decent size company employed 800-1000 workers. The statistical average was over 600 employees. Tobacco growing was extremely labor-intensive, everything had to be carried out with the greatest care. “The actual mining work that had to be done every year was extremely arduous and unhealthy, but the description of this would give the impression that the European supervisory staff was suffering the most,” said Breman.

The salary

The year was divided into two seasons: the field time, which lasted eight months, and the barn time, four months. During the field time, the soil was prepared by Javanese, Klingaleese and locally recruited workers. After that, the departments were demarcated and the more experienced Chinese set to work burning the fields (divided among them by lot), digging several times and further cleaning them. They also took care of the seedbeds that were established during this period and after 6-8 weeks they started to put out the young plants, per field 16000 plants. Initially, the company paid the tobacco growers according to the number of trees delivered.

Around 1880 a coolie was paid $ 8-9 per tobacco tree. That amount was maintained for more than a quarter of a century, at some companies it was even less. The total was still cut by the management: the costs of clearing and other preparation of the tobacco field by the auxiliary coolies, the tools and their replacement, the wages of the kongsikang and the women and children who searched for worms and tobacco leaves in the drying sheds. rained and hung up, all that had to be done pay the field cool from his own wages. Furthermore, the field coolies had to pay for the seedlings and, until the end of the nineteenth century, also the costs of fertilizing their field. This was part of the previously mentioned Borongan system, in which the worker is paid for the work in full. The net service of the field coolies over the entire eight-month growing cycle was not much higher than $ 75, so for a year of work the most experienced coolies were paid no more than $ tree but per leaf) and the field coolies for picking and stringing 8,000 leaves received a standard rate of 1 dollar. Employers thought this was more than enough, because the Chinese could transfer large amounts to China annually, namely 13 guilders per coolie.

According to H. Gorter, former administrator in Deli and author of Delianen (1941), among others, in which he sketches life on a tobacco plantation in the first decade of the twentieth century, wages were paid in Mexican dollars at that time. „But the government thought this was certainly a bit too crazy in a Dutch colony‟ so that the use of guilders was switched, which in particular the older Chinese had to get used to. Gorter 1941, p. 64. Until 1890 the exchange rate for the Mexican dollar was 2.20 Indian guilders. In the following years, the exchange rate fell to 1.25 guilders. The exchange rate was maintained until the beginning of the twentieth century, but when recruiting in Java, the recruiters quoted the wages in dollars, quoting the previous rate of 2 guilders. Breman 1992a, p. 141. The preference for the Straits dollars on the east coast of Sumatra and the west coast of Borneo at that time was also a thorn in the side of the colonial authorities; they were considered a threat to Dutch sovereignty. For many months and even years, inspectors traveled through those regions to collect old dollars and exchange them for shiny guilders. Claver 2006, p. 407.

A drying shed belonged to every 5-6 fields, where the tobacco grower handed in the picked leaves. There the leaves were hung to dry. The harvest went from the drying shed to the fermentation shed. This was a permanent building and was located on the company’s yard. A large part of the staff was concentrated there after the end of the picking period. At the same time, a number of special crews were busy preparing reclamations for the next year. At the end of the day, the coolies who sorted and bundled the leaves (that were Chinese and Javanese women) received piece wages.90

88 This is a calculation in guilders by the socialist MP Ir. H. Van Kol. Breman 1992a, p. 138. 89 Blussé 1995, Reunion with the Indies, episode „Chinese in the archipelago‟, cover photo. The text accompanying the photo reads: “Money transports to remote tobacco companies in Sumatra were, as here, provided by a planter on horseback and some armed Sikhs. Chinese coolies acted as carriers of the money chests. In the foreground, a relieved clerk receives the shipment ‘.

The period when hundreds of coolies were together in the fermentation shed was often also the period in which most of the coolies or coolies took place. Conflicts were the result of calling up and paying (or not paying) the debts. Overseers and coolies who had balances outstanding used the daily earnings paid during the barn time to settle the bill. Dissatisfaction with wages and work was also an important cause for unrest. The barn time was an excellent opportunity for the coolies to discuss their grievances among themselves, as long as talking was allowed.91

The field coolies on a tobacco farm received a maintenance allowance of 2 to 2.5 dollars per month during the field time. The piece wages they earned during the barn time were paid to them every 14 days. Towards the end of the working year, the final settlement took place on the big payday, and then the field coolie heard how much he had left over from the previous season. The other coolies were paid their wages for the last 14 days after expenses and advances had been deducted.92

Breman talks about the fraud that the management used to spend as little money as possible. Payment was made first in Mexican, then in Straits dollars. It was suggested to future laborers recruited to Java that SOK’s silver dollar was worth nearly as much as the silver rixdaalder circulating in Java, the ringgit (the silver dollar was also called ringgit), when it was not. The fraud was that they paid the coolies out partly in home-made money – paper receipts or metal discs that could only be used in the kedei, the enterprise store. The kedei was one of the links in the debt network in which the working people were trapped. The forced consumption of money in the kedei is, according to Breman, no different from forced shopping. According to them, the planters had decided to issue this company-tied medium of exchange due to a lack of sufficient small change to SOK. It has happened, according to a report, that an entrepreneur, in order to avoid an outburst of impatience, cut round plates of biscuit tins, put numbers on them and used them to pay Chinese coolies, pretending that she was using it to the Overwal, that ie in the Straits. That was impossible, of course, and the workers returned disappointed after a few days. But the ruse had succeeded, because in the meantime the entrepreneur had been able to provide himself with dollars and other necessary currency For example, a report states that, in order to avoid an outburst of impatience, an entrepreneur cut round plates of biscuit tins, put numbers on them, and paid Chinese coolies with them, pretending that she would use them at the Overwal, that is, in the Straits. , rightly so. That was impossible, of course, and the workers returned disappointed after a few days. But the ruse had succeeded, because in the meantime the entrepreneur had been able to provide himself with dollars and other necessary currency For example, a report states that, in order to avoid an outburst of impatience, an entrepreneur cut round plates of biscuit tins, put numbers on them, and paid Chinese coolies with them, pretending that she would use them at the Overwal, that is, in the Straits. , rightly so. That was of course impossible, and the workers returned after a few days disappointed. But the ruse had succeeded, because in the meantime the entrepreneur had been able to provide himself with dollars and other necessary currency

‘A beastly treatment’

What Breman noticed during his studies was the similarity in torture practices in colonial Asia. „The subject [the workers], called beasts, got what they deserved: a beastly treatment‟: there was, for example, rubbing the genitals of female coolies with ground red pepper, tying them in a crucified state to a stake in front of or under the the manager’s bungalow and it

administering electric shocks. This treatment did not only occur in Deli, but also in Assam and Cochin-China, among others.95

Yet it was presented as if it were the planters who were terrified of the workers. The fear would lead to nightmares and obsessions that they tried to ward off with terror. The stress the planters faced from day to day turned from time to time to a sense of insecurity bordering on hysteria, and the overseers and other confidants tasked with gathering information about what was going on among the coolies kept the fear. of their clients by reporting on unrest, bad faith, disobedience, sabotage, conspiracy and treason. 96

The Coolie Ordinance came into effect in 1880, although the Dutch government, which was much more critical than the colonial government in Batavia, had opposed it. The contract was concluded for three years. That was much longer than what was customary until the introduction of the ordinance. Judgment was placed first in the hands of the resident and then of the inspectors in the nearest main town of the administrative department in which the plantation was located. The sentence imposed consisted of forced labor on public works (krakal) for a period of 12 days, 3 months or a year, depending on the seriousness of the offense.98

Fighting desertion became a major concern. The Planters Committee reached an agreement with the Chinese chiefs to appoint hunters, called mataglaps (literally: dark eyes), to control the ships coming and going in the ports along the east coast.

Breman devotes a clear chapter to racism and violence. He argues that in the plantation system white was superior to Asian inferiority. This special coloring of the subordination-subordination relationship was a foregone conclusion for all concerned, in which the newcomers, both planters and coolies, were quickly socialized. The superiority and inferiority was really based solely on racial difference: “The labor army always formed of Easterners, partly of minority, the oversight in the hands of men with a sense of racial superiority, the whole living under a tradition of patriarchal relations” .

The worker was not an individual, not a person, he was merely a representative of the (racial) group to which he belonged. The stereotypes, which were mainly negative, were applied with the utmost self-evidence. In addition, the members of the group were all alike to their masters. They didn’t bother the workers

The anonymity of the Chinese workers in particular is strongly expressed in the belles-lettres.

The emphasis was on skin color, so mixed forms of white and brown and yellow were not allowed and the Indo-Europeans were missing in the cultures of Deli, unlike those in Java.102 The doctor Djawas who were brought to SOK to see their countrymen were not allowed to dress like their European counterparts, but had to adhere to the native dress according to local custom.103 Only the whites counted. The European planters in SOK were also known to outsiders as exceptionally arrogant. They expected the workforce to be slavish beyond what was customary in similar societies. A display of great submission was appropriate.

There were two views of the coolies among Europeans. The first view was that coolies were stupid, naive, shortsighted, behaved like children, and sometimes caused trouble, requiring them to be called to order like bellhops.

“The infantilization of the working people acted as a mechanism to justify their submission to the authority of the white man,” Breman said. The second view was that a worker was on the level of an animal. If you don’t talk to your horse if it doesn’t want to walk, you don’t have to with a coolie. The dehumanization already took place during the recruitment and transfer of the workers, in a way as if it were merchandise. The association with livestock transport is repeatedly made. We have seen that association in an advertisement before. Breman illustrates with an argument, also quoted by Van den Brand in his brochure, how racist the line of thought was that was commonplace, especially in planters’ circles:

[Chinese tobacco coolies] are beasts somewhat like humans. […] And if Chinese coolies were the same as animals, as far as morality and spiritual gifts are concerned, it does not follow, after all, that one may mistreat them, one should not also an animal. But no one has ever heard that an animal may act as a witness and make sworn statements, with burning sticks, mumbling mumbling, cow’s milk, Quran on the head, or how all those follies are done more, which serious people are watching at Batavia and seem to attach weight to it.

Among the white assistants, the writer Dé-lilah presents an Englishman in Hans Tongka’s career, Curzon. All this suggests that it is not purely European. He was born in Colombo and ‘quite brown’. His daughter Lilly has gorgeous black eyes and a lot of frizzy hair. The family is portrayed as poor, unclean and extremely untidy. Curzon does not promote. Eventually, he makes it to clerk, but that’s only because the principal clerk doesn’t want another assistant, the lover of the girl he’s madly in love with, promoted. Furthermore, in the same novel, there is Rosario, an assistant doctor, who is clearly portrayed as an Indian boy, whose wife is a “very beautiful nonna, with a body, lush and voluptuous’ and ‘a real lipstick’. Dé-lilah 1898, p. 232-233. An assistant doctor was not one of the managers on a plantation and apparently it is because of this that the Rosarians are tolerated in the environment of the white planters. Besides, it was dangerous anyway to upset a doctor if you ever needed him. Székely-Lulofs 1932b, p. 83. See also Clerkx 1961, p. 25.

Racism was inherent in the plantation environment and was a prerequisite for the enslavement of the working people. A remarkably large number of the gruesome torture cases mentioned by Rhemrev in his report did not relate to violations in the work sphere, but were the result of „boldnesses‟ committed by coolies in social life.109 The usual equation of workers with animals meant that any action against them could be condoned. After all, they were only animals. According to the planters, it was not necessary at all to account for this treatment. 110

It was not denied that some planters used violence against the coolies, but this was interpreted as self-protection on the part of the planters against the aggression of the coolies. However, there were degrees in the atrocities committed. Cremer thought that German planters did not belong on a plantation because of their „German military conception of discipline and obedience‟ .111 Interestingly, in the oldest Deli novel, Hans Tongka’s career (1898) of Dé-lilah, the two cruelest planters are one. Being German and Swiss. In reality, the most shocking cases of coolie abuse had actually occurred in companies employing almost exclusively Dutch employees.112

Hoetink, the official for Chinese affairs appointed in 1900 (who, according to Breman, was not exactly a good protector of the Chinese) was sent there between 1900 and 1902 to ascertain the effect of the coolie ordinance in a number of mining concessions. and agriculture in the Outlying regions, which employed mostly Chinese coolies. He went to the gold mines of Redjang Lebong in South Sumatra, where he did not believe much were put underground as if they were dogs, or thrown into the river. The situation was also appalling in other mines.

„The unproven claims of Indian and Chinese coolies who, as a rule, do not take too much of the truth and, as all Easterners, are inclined to exaggerate‟, when they complained that they were being mistreated by the doctor, but he was strong impressed by the situation in Redjang Soelit, where as many as 37 percent of workers did not make it to the end of their contracts and where, according to the report,

Breman also elaborates on the situation in the Ombilin coal mines of Sawah Loento, where not all but most of the workers were forced laborers. He thus shows that the conditions on the plantations were not that much better than those in which the forced laborers lived. Corporal punishment, especially rape attacks, was widely used as a means of enforcing labor discipline. The inspector of the civil medical service at the time, Dr. AG Vorderman, saw during his visit to the mine that a police officer in his spare time was practicing hard and precisely hitting a banana trunk (trunk of a banana tree) that against the penalty post was tied. One in every seven whipped people ended up in hospital and died of his injuries or became permanently disabled.115 Hoetink, however, who paid a visit to the mine a few months after Vorderman, came to the conclusion that „the penal system for Indigenous people really does justice here: the convicts are forced at Sawah Loento to perform regular and useful work‟. Hoetink even thought that the situation in Ombilin was not worse but better than in other companies he visited.116

The punishment that played such a major role in the discipline of the working people on the plantations was not an invention of power-hungry employers, but a tried and tested means of the colonial administration to get workers who came into resistance back into line.117 We will remember from Breman’s treatise mainly that a racist ideology was not only a characteristic of colonial society, but therefore also the basis for the relationship between the colored coolies and their white superiors.

De panglong koelies

Panglongs are sawmills, beamworks, charcoal and firewood cutting shops in Sumatra, especially in the Bengkalis department. Among the workers recruited by Chinese employers in Singapore are Hakkas, Fujianese, Hoklo’s and Cantonese. An inspector at the National Administration was charged with the supervision of the panglongs. According to AG de Bruin, archivist of the East Coast of Sumatra Institute, 118 this has led to a lot of improvement. Before that, the situation in the panglongs was very bad, the coolies were subject to beatings and abuses by the Chinese bosses. For example, a report from 1898 stated:

The isolation of the panglongs, having communion with the outside world only through the tongues (ships) of the Singaporean owners, gives the taukee (the head) a very convenient means of detaining his workmen for as long as he chooses. No coolie is admitted aboard the tongkang without his permit, and fleeing by land is in most places so objectionable that it is only resorted to in the utmost need. Of course the deserter is immediately imitated, and on reconsideration is mercilessly beaten, not only, but also debited for a few dollars.

A runaway Chinese cannot expect any help from the local Malays; these immediately bring him back to his master in order to become master of the ‘conceiving wages’. If he manages to reach another panglong, he is usually allowed to stay, but before being hired on the usual terms, he has to work for a living without pay for some time. In the meantime, there is always the danger of being handed over to his previous boss again. The only chance for freedom the coolies have if they conspire and can get hold of the owner’s boat and flee with it.