Dutch Rule In The Netherlands Indies

Guidance for Pacific Administrators The Concluding Article in a Series Written for “PIM” by Wolfe Preger

rE Netherlands East Indies Govern ment’s educational activities em braced not only modem hygiene, agriculture, thrift and literacy, but also training in*native handicrafts and mod ern industry.

Industrial Development

FOR the last 40 years, the Netherlands Indies Admiriistration has paid spe cial attention to the possibilities of developing native industries. After pre liminary investigation, an Industries Division was added to the Department of Economic Affairs, which supplied technical information and advice to pri vate concerns, established experimental stations for diverse industrial undertak ings such as earthenware, textiles, fibres, in the same way as the administration in the past had experimented with and developed the agricultural resources of the country by the introduction of such non-indigenous products as tea, rubber, quinine, oil palms, coffee, tobacco, etc.

Training centres were established throughout the countryside, where the villagers were taught and trained in the native handicrafts.

In urban centres they were taught to handle modern looms and other mach inery suitable for secondary industries.

These industries developed gradually at first, but during the depression they were stimulated to greater activity, with spec tacular results. Thus, the weaving of textiles, which started as a modest home industry, developed at first by the intro duction of more modern hand-looms and later by modern mechanical looms, even tually gave employment in home and factory to 2,200,000 people.

In the five years 1930-35, the importa tion of cotton yarn increased fivefold; that of artificial silk yarn one hundred fold. Within four years of the beginning of the depression, Java was producing oyer 62,000,000 yards of woven textiles of all kinds, widths and qualities. By 1940 the textile industry had developed to such an extent that the consumption of raw materials for that year amounted to £A20.000,000 and the combined output of the native and modern looms was 140,000,000 yards.

The manufacture of tobacco was also encouraged with gratifying results. The British-American Tobacco Company’s two cigarette factories had a daily capacity of 32,000,000 cigarettes, just prior to the Pacific war. In addition, there were hundreds of other concerns, large and small, some specialising in the manufac ture of cigarettes suitable for the native palate, the output of which ran into billions. Cigars were manufactured also.

In 1939, exports to the Outer Islands amounted to 18,400,000 lb. of cigarettes and cigars and 7,120,000 lb. of manufac tured tobacco.

Electric light bulbs, hitherto practically a Japanese monopoly, were produced in Sourabaya by a European concern and in Cheribon by a Chinese company.

Petrol lighters, paper, cutlery, ‘ hard ware, earthenware, sunshades, hat hoods, woodwork, furniture, leather goods and industries of a similar kind had sprung up throughout the country, providing employment for considerable numbers of the native population who otherwise might have been without any means of subsistence.

Other industries, too, of a more Euro pean character, flourished in the Nether lands East Indies: engineering, printing, the production of precision instruments, munitions, canned goods, cement, dia mond polishing, production of beer, mineral waters, ice, oxygen, chocolate, biscuits, and glassware, shipbuilding, the assembly of automobiles, and the manu facture of tyres.

Protection Of Home Industries

SUCH gratifying results, however, could not possibly have been obtained had not the Government fostered

and protected secondary industries Pro tection in one form or another was vital for the welfare of the population, Euro pean, Indonesian and foreign Asiatic Exports which, in 1929, had amounted to some £A248,000,000, had dropped to £A87,000,000 in 1933. Imports simi larly decreased from £A195,000,000 to £A55,000,000. Government receipts drop ped drastically, its expenditure following, but at a considerably slower pace. Great economic hardship was suffered by all sections of the community.

Between the years 1929 and 1933, how ever, East Indies imports from Japan jumped from 10 per cent, of the total to 33 per cent, of the total. Not only were the Japanese inundating the country with their cheap goods, but they also tried to monopolise their distribution through their own import, wholesale and retail houses. Furthermore, all these goods were carried by Japanese bottoms, Dutch vessels obtaining no share whatever in

the traffic. The Japanese acquired a practical monopoly in the Netherlands East Indies in cotton textiles, electric light bulbs, rubber-soled shoes, tyres, umbrellas and bicycles. And this serious increase in imports from Japan was not counterbalanced by Japanese purchases from the Netherlands East Indies. The Government, therefore, found it neces sary to intervene, and a system of gen eral and specified quotas, and import licences was imposed. The quota system was regulated according to the purchases made from different countries during certain years by the Netherlands East Indies. The list of commodities from time to time was expanded to include cotton textiles, electric light bulbs, bicycles, wrapping paper, fertilisers, etc.

This system of quotas and licences, succeeded not only in checking the Jap anese commercial invasion of NEI, but reversed the foreign trade trends to the benefit of the country. In brief, they

served as a bargaining basis in reciprocal trade agreements and protected and encouraged the development of domestic industries,

Transport And Communication

/COMMUNICATION and transport were I . in nn wav backward At th^nnt £ e £ k ° of W ar in 1941 there were 30 000 miles of asnhalt and hard-mir faced highways in NEI In Java there e c r e e a s22smili of first-class m^lrn motor roads covering all parts of the island. Buses alone transported 25 fnil non travellers along these roads annually.

Bv masterlv ensinperintr the Admini^tra tion built a i' 6oo " l ™ l6 highway in Suma tra which traversed the inland from north to south, and also linked the entire by-road system.

Railway transportation in Java is as up-to-date and modern as in any part of the world. At the time of the invasion there were 10 privately-owned or State

owned railways, including a large urban network of tramways. The State rail ways carried annually about 147 million passengers and 425 million ton-miles of goods, and covered 867 million traveller miles. The State railways also controlled 1,100 telegraph apparatus and operated 8,000 miles of telegraph connections.

Large stretches of the railway network in Java and Sumatra involved outstand ing feats of engineering, owing to the mountainous and volcanic nature of the country.

There were 82,000 registered private and public motor vehicles.

The civil aviation activities of the Netherlands East Indies are well-known.

So, too, are the activities and dimen sions of the merchant marine. Mention, however, might be made that the har bours of Sourabaya and Batavia between them handled annually a quantity of goods valued at £A250,000,000; and to fit the harbours to handle this volume of trade, the Government in 1939 spent £A36,700,000 in equipping Sourabaya alone.

In that year, 10,874 steam and motor ships entered and departed from Soura baya and the other ports of the Nether lands East Indies.

Mineral Wealth

ACTIVITIES in the Netherlands East Indies, although fundamentally agri cultural and partly industrial, con sisted to a considerable extent in min eral production. In 1939 no less than 61i per cent, of the total export tonnage of the Netherlands East Indies consisted of minerals, representing 29 per cent., in value, of the country’s total exports.

Apart from oil, the Netherlands East Indies produced and exported bauxite, nickel, iron ores, coal, tin, and, to a small degree, gold and silver.

The largest mineral product is, of course, petroleum and petroleum pro ducts, and, during 1940 the production was 7,939,000 tons of crude oil and a similar quantity of derivates including a substantial percentage of high octane spirit. This placed the Netherlands Indies in fifth place among the oil pro ducing countries in the world.

After oil, the most important mineral product is tin. Production has been restricted to the islands of Bangka, Billi ton and Singkep, off the east coast of Sumatra. The Netherlands Indies was the second largest producer of tin in the world.

In Borneo and Celebes there are hun dreds of millions tons of iron ore con taining 45 to 50 per cent, of iron, with a small percentage of chromium and nickel, so far, un-exploited. An attempt was made in East Borneo prior to the outbreak of war, when 23,500 tons of ore containing 4-per cent, of nickel was pro duced, but the war stopped these activi ties.

Bauxite production was started in 1936 and increased so rapidly that NEI became the most important producer of bauxite in East Asia; the production in 1940 was 318,958 tons, with an export value of £A428,010.

Finances And Colonisation

THE multiplicity of these products and commodities and the * substantial quantities exported provided the Netherlands East Indies with a favorable annual trade balance.

But despite this, and the substantial sources of national income, there was, on the average, an annual deficit in the national exchequer. Government expen diture and the cost of maintaining the Administration’s activities for the welfare of the people consumed all, and more than all, the national income. During the depression, the financial resources of

the country were inadequate to maintain all of these activities. Many of them were curtailed, and the mother country, at that time, presented the East Indies with a gift of 25,000,000 guilders, to be spent on public welfare projects.

Part of this money was devoted to financing a colonisation scheme which had been in progress since 1905, when, to relieve the mounting pressure of the increase in population, colonists from Java were given free transportation and financial support during the first years of settlement. This scheme has been a steady Government policy ever since, but it has also been a costly one. Neverthe less, the Government has gone ahead with it, because, in view of the natural limits of Java, it is the only possible solution to the problem. In 1937 a Cen tral Commission for the emigration and colonisation of natives was set up.

Increased amounts were set aside in the Budget to finance the work, and the number of colonists increased rapidly.

The majority were settled in Sumatra but an increasing number were being sent to Celebes and some to Borneo. The scheme envisaged an annual transmigra tion of 100,000 people from Java to the Outer Islands. One of the most winning traits of the Javanese is their attach ment to their homes and it was found that on arriving in the new settlements they were inclined to pine. To relieve their nostalgic distress, the Govern ment went so far as to reconstruct exact replicas of the colonists’ own villages in whiclj they had lived when in Java.

Conclusion

THE brief glance we have taken at the Netherlands East Indies has given us some idea of the task assumed by the Dutch, its nature, complexity and difficulty. It has also given us a glimpse of the methods employed and of the character of the men who evolved and applied these methods. We have seen that their own national character and traditions brought freedom of conscience and free speech to the Netherlands East Indies as a matter of course. It has also brought a freedom not mentioned in the Atlantic Charter —the relative freedom from disease.

Freedom from want, difficult enough to attain in the highly industrialised coun tries of Europe and America, was a free dom attained by the Netherlands East Indies mainly due to the enterprise and acumen of the Dutch. The fourth free dom, freedom from fear was one enjoyed for over a century by the peoples of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and in all its territories, until the German and Japanese fury was unleashed on the world. But this freedom even more than the freedom from want is one which can not be preserved by the efforts of the men of one country alone.

A significant sidelight on the charac ter of these men and their methods is supplied by a development which took place some 20 years ago in the seats of learning where they, the administrators of the Netherlands East Indies, received

their training.

Until 1925, the University of Leyden, in Holland, had a monopoly of the train ing for the East Indies administrative corps. In that year, a privately endowed Indological faculty was set up at Utrecht University. It was financed by private individuals who feared the influence of the Leyden-trained officials. The Uni versity itself was attacked by interested parties as being hyper-ethical and the young Leyden officials were accused of being too much in sympathy with native interests.

That they did indeed foster the inter ests of the native population received ample evidence in 1940. In that year,

the Netherlands East Indies rule was subjected to a supreme test. When the mother country was attacked by the Ger man Army, the , Indonesian populations gave spontaneous evidence of their loy alty to the Crown. Had there been any kind of misrule in the country that was the moment when the people would have voiced their dissatisfaction or taken active measures to rid themselves of those responsible for any misrule.

Instead, they rallied round the Govern ment, gave it every support, and, when the time arrived, fought shoulder to shoulder with their Dutch rulers as valiantly and as stubbornly as the Dutch themselves. Both are still fighting to regain their homeland from the invader.

Rev. R. L. Challis, who is in charge of the London Missionary Society work in the Cook Islands, left for New Zealand in November with his wife and daughter, on three months’ sick leave.