The Old World and Its Ways

The Dutch traders followed the Portuguese into the East Indies, and in time supplanted them. Holland then chartered the East India Trading Company and Amsterdam became the spice center from which all Europe drew its supplies. The Dutch Trading Company was manned by a thrifty crew, and it was not long before they conceived of monopolizing the world's spice market, and they accomplished this by destroying groves and prohibiting competition by treaty with the natives. They are also charged with destroying spice by the ton in Amsterdam in order to maintain the price. One apologist for this almost universally condemned practice of the Dutch, says:

"When the Dutch established their influence in these seas and relieved the native princes from their Portuguese oppressors, they saw that the easiest way to repay themselves would be to get this spice trade into their own hands. For this purpose they adopted the wise principle of concentrating the culture of these valuable products in those spots of which they could have complete control. To do this effectually, it was necessary to abolish the culture and trade in all other places, which they succeeded in doing by treaty with the native rulers. These agreed to have all the spice trees in their possessions destroyed. They gave up large, though fluctuating, revenues, but they gained in return a fixed subsidy, freedom from the constant attacks and harsh oppression of the Portuguese, and a continuance of their regal power and exclusive authority over their own subjects, which has maintained in all the islands except Ternate to this day. It is no doubt supposed by most Englishmen, who have been accustomed to look upon this act of the Dutch with vague horror, as something utterly unprincipled and barbarous, that the native population suffered grievously by this destruction of such valuable property. But it is certain that this is not the case."

He then proceeds to charge that the native sultans had a "rigid monopoly" of the spice trade before the Dutch arrived, and that the latter by prohibiting the cultivation of spices left the natives more time for the production of food and other salable things, and concludes: "I believe, therefore, that this abolition of the spice trade in the Moluccas was actually beneficial to the inhabitants, and that it was an act both wise in itself and morally and politically justifiable."

It will be noticed that in a very brief space he employs the arguments mainly relied upon to support monopoly wherever it has appeared, and also for colonialism in its worst forms. In the first place, the Dutch had to "repay themselves" for having "relieved the native princes from their Portuguese oppressors" – that is, they had to collect pay for their philanthropy; second, as the sultans were doing the same thing, the Dutch might as well do it – that is, the very familiar argument, "If we don't do it, somebody else will;" and third, it was a good thing for the natives – it is never difficult to prove this to the man who profits by the system. But nothing is said as to the effect of the monopoly upon consumers of spices throughout the world. It does not seem to occur to the writer above quoted (Wallace) that they are to be considered. The view point from which he looks at the whole matter can be judged from his admonition to the British that they must not be too much "afraid of the cry of despotism and slavery" if they are to improve their "rude subjects" and raise them up toward their own level.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Dutch East India Company became involved and turned its possessions over to the crown of Holland, since which time Netherlands India has been a crown colony. There was a brief interim of British rule (1811 to 1816), but at the close of the Napoleonic wars the Dutch regained their possessions by treaty, and the English congratulated themselves that they had been relieved of a burden.

The Dutch have governed Java through the natives, a resident acting as "elder brother" to the Javanese ruler. While the native government has not been disturbed, and while the native ruler is protected from rival claimants, he is really a prisoner in his own castle, and can not leave the premises without permission. However, as these native rulers receive good salaries and are allowed to exact homage from their subjects, they seem quite content with their lot, and the people, naturally docile, yield obedience to the chiefs of their own race.

The culture system, aside from the indirect method of ruling, is the distinguishing feature of Dutch colonialism as it existed until recent years. The East India Company followed the practice of the native princes and collected a land tax or rent of one-fifth the crop, and required in addition the labor of all able-bodied males for one day in five. During the five years of British rule, forced labor was abolished and a land tax substituted for the one-fifth rent, while a separate property system was encouraged. As soon as the Dutch resumed control, they went back to their old régime except that they demanded one day's labor in seven instead of one day in five. By regulating the crops to be planted, by collecting the fifth of the produce of the land and by compelling the peasants to plant one-fifth of the village land in crops to be sold to the government at a fixed price far below the market price, the government of Holland derived large revenues from its India possessions. It has been estimated that in fifty years a sum exceeding three hundred million dollars was exacted from the natives in forced labor and in the sale of produce below the market price. As might be expected, the greed which manifested itself in the conduct of the government aroused increasing criticism, and the authorities were at last compelled to change their methods.

Those who travel through Java are unanimous in their praise of the beautiful roads and the substantial bridges that span the streams: they admire the commodious plantation homes, the splendid tea and coffee farms and the well built and well kept cities, and they are inclined to excuse the means employed by the foreigners in the development of the islands. It must be remembered, however, that the rice fields, which are most attractive, existed before the Europeans set foot upon the soil and that the spices, instead of being introduced by the Dutch, were the products which first attracted their attention. The Dutch have charged a high price for the services rendered, and have given little attention to the intellectual and moral improvement of the people. Being surprised that the Javanese had a well developed system of agriculture and irrigation before the Europeans arrived, I asked an intelligent Hollander: "What, then, have the Dutch taught the Javanese?" and he replied laughingly, "We have taught them to pay us their money."

The fact that the culture system has, after full discussion, been abandoned is a sufficient condemnation of it, and the fact that reforms are being introduced is a confession that they were needed. I had the pleasure of meeting the present governor, General Van Heutsz, and found him interested in enlarging the educational system, and in lightening the burdens upon the people. He has already reduced the labor requirement one half, so that the natives now give one day in fourteen to the government instead of one day in seven.

The governor of Netherlands India receives the same salary as our president, and the resident receives a salary which, including allowances, amounts to nearly ten thousand dollars. The expenses of the colonial government are paid by the natives and by the foreigners residing there, but the government of Holland no longer draws an income from the islands. Her advantages are at present indirect ones and consist, first of profits earned by her citizens in trade with the islands; second, of rents collected by her citizens from plantations; and third, of salaries drawn by her citizens for civil or military service in the islands.

Formerly land was sold to foreigners, but for a great many years it has been the policy of the government to sell no land whatever to either Europeans or Asiatics, but to lease it for seventy-five years or less. I was surprised to find that the natives own considerably more than twice as much as foreigners hold under lease or deed, and that land, the product of which must be sold to the government at a fixed price, has been reduced to 300,000 acres.

One of the beneficent reforms about to be inaugurated is the establishment of government pawnshops, which will loan money to the people at a low rate of interest, and thus rescue them from the extortion which has been practiced upon them. The government has already established savings banks in which the deposits are constantly increasing.

There is a growing demand in Java for a greater recognition of the people in government, and this demand is being yielded to in the cities. The colonial authorities have encouraged the soldiers to marry native women, these marriages terminating when the soldiers return to Europe. As a result, there is a half caste element which has been given better educational advantages than are accorded to the natives. This element considers itself as native, although counted in the census as European, and is already organizing with a view of securing more civil liberty.

Whatever may be said of Dutch colonialism in the past, a new era is dawning, and the present rulers recognize that their administration must be measured by the improvement in the people rather than by the profits drained from the land by Europeans.

CHAPTER XX.

IN THE TROPICS

In a tour around the world one travels by steamer about six thousand miles through the tropics. Entering the torrid zone soon after leaving Hong Kong, almost touching the equator at Singapore, and not entering the temperate zone again until he is nearly half way through the Red Sea, he has ample time to study the temperature; and our opportunities were still farther enlarged by the trip to Java, which carried us nearly eight degrees below the equator. While on the water the heat is not so noticeable, being relieved by the ocean breezes, on land one suffers during the middle of the day. It is not that the heat in the shade is greater than the summer heat in the United States, but one can not always be in the shade, and the rays of the sun are piercing to a degree which is inconceivable to one without experience in these latitudes. At the seaports, too, the heat is intensified by the weight and moisture of the air, and the temperature is practically the same the year round – at least one who visits this part of the world in the winter time can not imagine it worse.

While, the native population work barebacked, barelegged, barefooted, and sometimes bareheaded, Americans and Europeans resort to every possible device to protect them from the climate.

The white helmet, with a lining of cork, is the most common headwear for both men and women, and it does not require a very long stay here to convince one that it is superior to the straw hat. White clothes which reflect the rays of the sun are also largely worn by both sexes. For evening dress, men sometimes wear a close-fitting white jacket, reaching to the waist, and before breakfast they lounge about in pajamas of variegated colors.

Eating extends through the entire day. Tea or coffee can be had from five to eight; breakfast is ready at eight or nine and ends at twelve; lunch or tiffin as it is called here, occupies the hours from one to three; then tea follows at four, and dinner is served from eight to ten-thirty. These are the hours for Europeans and Americans, and for those natives who have adopted foreign ways, but most of the natives look as if they had missed some of these meals.

We are among the dark-skinned races here. Chinamen are a darker yellow than those seen farther north, the Malays are a dark brown and Tamils are quite black, while the Singalese and Indians are between a black and brown. Mark Twain pays a high compliment to these dark-skinned people at the expense of the white races, contending that their complexion is always good, while the white face has freckles, pimples and moles to mar it.

There are two great seaports near the equator which every traveler visits, viz.: Singapore and Colombo, and most of the boats also stop at Penang, a thriving city on the Malay peninsula, some four hundred miles north of Singapore. Singapore is on a small island of the same name not far from the mainland, and its harbor is full of sea-going vessels of all nations. The ships from Europe to China and Japan call here, as do also the boats between Europe and Java and between India and Australia. Here, too, are to be found representatives of many nationalities, twenty-nine distinct languages being spoken in this one city. The Portuguese were the pioneers, and there are still some descendants of the early traders living on the island. Next in point of time came the Dutch, and their nation is still more numerously represented among the business firms. England, however, though a later arrival, has largely supplanted both in the control of the commerce of the port, though the Germans seem to be numerous.

Singapore and Penang are the great export ports for tin, three-fourths of the world's output for that product being mined near by. The United States takes ten and a half million dollars of tin from the Straits Settlements and six millions of other products and sells only $1,161,000 worth in return.

I might add in this connection that the trade possibilities of the tropics have been very much overestimated by enthusiastic expansionists. The natives raise their own food at a much lower cost than we could possibly sell it to them, even if our food were suited to their wants. They do not need our building material, and as for clothing, one American is worth more as a customer than a hundred of these natives. While a few wear rich robes, the mass content themselves with a very scanty costume of very cheap cotton – a costume which someone has described as "a handkerchief around the loins and a table cloth around the head." No shoe manufacturer need send a salesman to these parts, for even the coachman and footmen in livery are barefooted. I once supposed that we might work up a trade in breech clouts and fishing rods, but I find the latter grow here in profusion, and the former are not valuable enough to furnish a basis for much trade.

There is one branch of commerce that might be developed if this were not the home of the gem and if the natives were not skillful goldsmiths. Jewelry is the passion here. Women fairly load themselves down with ornaments when they can afford it. They wear rings on the fingers and toes, bracelets and anklets, ear ornaments galore and, strangest of all, jewels in the nose. We noticed one woman yesterday with three enormous pendants hanging from each ear, one from the top, one from the side and one from the lobe, and our coachman at Kandy was resplendent with six in either ear, but his jewelry was more modest in size. The nose ornaments look like shirt studs and are screwed into one or both nostrils; sometimes a ring hangs from the point of the nose. The necklaces vary greatly in style, workmanship and value. The island of Ceylon is rich in gems and furnishes a variety of stones for the jeweler's art. From the fact that nearly all of the precious stones mentioned in the Bible are to be found here it is thought that Ceylon must have been known to the Israelites and that her ships carried wealth to Solomon.

After seeing the extravagant use of jewelry here, one is almost tempted to forgive even the most vulgar display of precious stones made in the Occident; and then, too, the rubies, sapphires, the diamonds, the emeralds, the amethysts, the alexanderites, the cat's eyes, the opals, etc., exhibited in the stores here are so beautiful that one must be proof against vanity to resist their charms.

Ice might have formed an important item of trade, for nowhere does the white man appreciate this luxury more, had not the ice machine made importation unnecessary. The larger boats now manufacture their own ice from condensed sea water, and there are plants at all the important ports. We went from Borneo to Singapore on a ship which was not equipped with an ice machine, and we complained when the supply gave out. An English passenger took advantage of our distress to compare national characteristics, and humorously remarked that when the Americans moved into a new territory, they at once established an ice plant, while the English gave their first attention to the laying out of cricket grounds.

One does not travel far in the Orient until he becomes a crank on the subject of water. He receives so many warnings that he soon suspects that disease lurks in every glassful. If he tries the bottled waters, they pall on the taste, and if he relies on boiled water he is tormented with fear that it has not really been boiled or that some other water has been accidentally substituted. "The Old Oaken Bucket" is recalled as a vision of delight, and "the well at home" is remembered with an admiration never felt before (faucet may be substituted for well by those who live in a city).

Colombo is situated on the island of Ceylon just below the southernmost point of the mainland of India. Here, too, is a commodious harbor visited by all merchant fleets. It vies with Singapore as an equatorial port. The "spicy breezes" of Ceylon are immortalized in song and story – it is the land

"Where every prospect pleasesAnd only man is vile."

At Kandy, about seventy-five miles from the coast, there is an excellent botanical garden rivaling the garden at Buitenzorg, even as Kandy itself rivals Buitenzorg as a summer resort. (There are extensive gardens at Singapore and Penang, but they are inferior to those in Ceylon and Java.) These gardens are about equally distant from the equator; the former north, the latter south, but the garden at Kandy has twice the altitude of the other. We were interested in comparing the plants and examining the new specimens. While Buitenzorg is superior in her collection of orchids the ferns at Kandy surpass anything we have seen. Here the yellow bamboo is added to the varieties seen elsewhere; here, too, we saw the screw palm, whose leaves form a spiral line like the thread of a screw. Another curious variety is the sealing wax palm, the higher joints of which look exactly like red sealing wax. The travelers' palm, which we also saw in Java, is to be found here, its name being derived from the fact that each leaf stem catches and holds sufficient water to slake a traveler's thirst. The talipot palm attracts the attention of all visitors, not only because its leaves formed the parchment for the early books of Buddhism, but because it flowers but once, and then, as if exhausted by its half century's effort, dies. The sensitive plant grows wild here and seems almost human in its perception, as it shrinks from the slightest touch and folds its leaves as if withered.

I have already spoken of the fruits of the tropics, especially those of Java, but I think I ought to qualify my words. Since reveling in mangosteens, rambutans, etc., I have eaten an apple and am convinced that no tropical fruit can compare with it; and when to the apple are added the peach, the pear, the plum and the cherry, and to these fruits of the trees are added the grape, the strawberry, the raspberry and the blackberry, not to speak of the pineapples, oranges and bananas of our southern states, who will say that the temperate zone is not as highly favored as the warmer lands?

We not only have an abundance of both the necessaries and the luxuries, but we escape some of the torments of the tropics. Animals, reptiles and insects run riot here. The tiger is "man-eating," the serpents are large and poisonous and the insects are omnipresent. We sometimes complain at home of the mosquito, which seems to be a universal pest, and found everywhere, "from Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral strands," but here its activity is perennial and its appetite reaches its maximum. In all the hotels the beds are protected by mosquito bars, for without them sleep would be impossible. The ant is even more annoying than the mosquito, for while the former does most of its prowling at night, the latter "improves each shining hour." If the natives play the sluggard, it is because they refuse to profit by the example of industry which the ant ever presents to them. It is not uncommon for the legs of dining tables and cupboards to be set in bowls of water as a protection from these insects, and where this precaution is not taken the diner divides his time between eating and fighting ants. The white ant has a literary turn of mind and pays especial attention to books. We have heard of several libraries being ravaged by this insect, the leaves being so perforated that the books looked like honeycombs. In his search for knowledge the ant has the companionship of the cockroach, which grows here to the length of two or three inches, can fly, and stains what it can not devour. The house lizard is always in evidence. One evening we counted twenty-four of these interesting little reptiles in sight at one time on our porch. At night lizards in the trees call hoarsely to each other, and when it rains the air is vocal with the croaking of frogs and the singing of insects.

In the Botanical Garden at Kandy we saw hundreds of flying foxes, which look like buzzards. Some of these flying foxes measure four feet from tip to tip.

I find that there is a disease in these latitudes called tropical frenzy – an uncontrollable anger which sometimes manifests itself when European officials deal with native subjects. This has been seriously discussed in medical meetings, and it has been argued that acts of violence on the part of officials should be excused on this ground. The subject has been scientifically considered at a meeting of German physicians. This disease seems to be confined to Europeans, the natives being immune from it – at least, it is not considered a good defense when urged by a native as an excuse for doing violence to a European.

My experience with the money changers of the Orient has made the money changers of America seem virtuous by comparison. This is the worst place for shaving, for discounts, for premiums, for commissions and for exchange that I have visited. In traveling, one has frequently to change money from the currency of one nation to that of another, and as there seems to be no fixed rate, he never knows what he is going to realize. (By the way, one who thinks that a gold dollar is good the world around can learn something from the discounts.) At Colombo I had some Singapore bills converted into rupees. The cashier at the hotel said that the rate was one-twenty, and gave me twelve rupees for ten dollars. A few minutes afterwards I had occasion to buy some tickets of a tourist agent and he allowed me fifteen rupees for ten dollars; the next time I made change I received sixteen rupees and seventy cents for ten. This is a sample of the experience one has here. At Singapore I drew some money on my letter of credit which calls for pounds; as I was going into English territory, I thought it would be convenient to carry some five pound notes, but the bank insisted on converting the pounds into Singapore dollars at eight-forty-five, and then offered to sell me five pound notes at the rate of eight-seventy. When I related the incident to an Englishman, he recalled an instance where a man presented a two hundred pound note and asked for smaller bills; the bank charged him a commission for converting the larger bills into rupees and then another commission for converting the rupees into five pound notes.

I found in China that the notes issued by a bank in one city would be discounted when presented at a branch of the same bank in another city. Throughout the Malay states the Chinese are conspicuous as money lenders, but at Singapore they come into competition with the Indians, who are their superior in this line of business. At Colombo we saw no Chinese at all.

We have found the American missionary everywhere, but his work among the Malays is less promising than anywhere else. Missionary work has been quite successful among the Chinese in the Malay archipelago and among the Tamils at Singapore, but nearly all the Malays are Mohammedans, and while they believe in one God and recognize Christ as a great prophet, they believe the author of their religion to have been a superior teacher.