抄録
This paper discusses four characteristics of agricultural development in West Java from the early 18th to the early 19th century:
1. West Java's agricultural development in this period meets the four criteria established by I. Wallerstain [1989] for “incorporation” into the modern world system, although he did not mention Southeast Asia. The development in West Java, however, differed in that people there were mostly able to join in and opt out of cash crop cultivation in accordance with their own interests, in contrast with Wallerstain's cases, especially in India, where people had no choice.
2. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) seems to have “incorporated” West Java not because of the Company's military and economic dominance, but because of its insufficiency. In the 18th Century, Chinese merchants and workers were very active in cash crop cultivation in East and Southeast Asia. The VOC was not powerful enough to expel or defeat the Chinese merchants in West Java, nor could it control the native people without the cooperation of local Chinese merchants. It seems to have been obliged to strengthen its coffee monopoly in order to defend its coffee profits from Chinese commercial power.
3. M. C. Hoadley's “feudal mode of production” theory [1994] is severely called into question by the case of the Tjianjur regency. Hoadley claims that the “feudal mode of production” was established in West Java in the middle of the 18th century. But there is no evidence that a dominant landlord class existed in the early 19th century. On the contrary, cultivators held paddy fields that they had cleared themselves or inherited from their fathers. Was the “feudal mode of production” there so weak that it had declined quickly by the early 19th century?
4. West Java is located in the eastern border of Takaya's “Western Insular Eco-area.” In other words, West Java is a transition area, which has a rich variety of topography, flora and fauna. Without these natural conditions, the VOC could not have introduced and monopolized coffee production.
