Introduction: Colonial Legacies of Corvée
The 1,000-kilometer Great Post Road and the 500-kilometer Congo-Ocean Railway are just two of the many physical remnants that testify to the exploitative character of colonial interventions around the world. The Great Post Road was built in 1808 under Dutch colonial rule to connect the northern parts of the island of Java. The Congo-Ocean Railway was built between 1922 and 1934 under French colonial rule in West Africa to connect Brazzaville with the Atlantic coast. Although these colonial infrastructural projects were dated more than a century apart, they have more in common than their extremely high death tolls during construction. Both projects were built with the coercive method of conscripted public labor, or corvée labor.
The history of corvée, and its role in the early transformations of the modern world, has been interpreted in different ways. Cases of corvée labor in the colonial context have mainly been seen either as surviving forms of indigenous or Asian feudalism used by colonial authorities adapting their behavior to local circumstances, as reproductions of European feudal relations in colonial societies, or as forms of taxation by weaker colonial powers. In this article, we propose a break from such perspectives in order to trace the important role of coercive corvée labor regimes in the colonial and capitalist remaking of the world. We argue that corvée regimes must instead be seen as refined methods of colonial exploitation that provided colonial actors more direct access to and control over the production of commercially interesting global commodities. This reversal of perspective reintroduces corvée labor regimes into the debates on the history of capitalism, colonialism, and the shaping of (early) global inequalities as part of a much more modern repertoire of strategies that deeply impacted societies, and social and racial relations across the world.
This article draws on the study of an important case of the early history of corvée colonialism, namely, the expansion and use of corvée labor by the Dutch East India Company (VOC). After its rapid expansion in the first decades of the seventeenth century, the Dutch East India Company became the dominant European colonial force in the Indian Ocean and Indonesian archipelago worlds. It followed in the footsteps of the earlier Iberian empires and preceded the expansions of the French and British empires of the eighteenth century. The VOC gained access to different, often deeply connected, labor regimes to support its expansionist and economic aims. Contract, slave, convict, and corvée labor systems coexisted in an intricate web of labor regulations in which one form of labor could be substituted by another, either as a disciplinary measure or to maximize efficiency and profitability (Van Rossum Reference Van Rossum, Damir-Geilsdorf, Lindner, Müller, Tappe and Zeuske2016, Reference Van Rossum, de Vito, Anderson and Bosma2018). The Company, at the same time, operated in environments with highly developed societies and states that could often parallel VOC power. The expansion of the power of the Dutch East India Company was thus dependent upon the different contexts in which it operated. This resulted in different strategies and different varieties of corvée labor regimes. The impact of such regimes reached far, affecting not only the large-scale labor mobilization itself, but also social and ethnic categorizations. And their legacy was lasting, with colonial corvée labor regimes being used, reused, and transplanted in later centuries—for example, in the notorious cultivation system of the nineteenth-century Netherlands Indies and the public forced labor of twentieth-century Belgian Congo (Frankema and Buelens Reference Frankema and Buelens2013).
This article aims to trace the transformations set in motion by the Dutch East India Company in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by studying and comparing the role and development of corvée labor in three main regions of the VOC world: Amboina, Ceylon, and Java. The article first tackles the phenomenon of corvée labor, discussing the existing literature on coerced labor and suggesting a model to understand corvée and tributary relations not only as taxation or production regimes, but rather as labor and (political-)social regimes that became of crucial importance to colonial capitalism. Second, the article explores the development of corvée labor in the VOC empire by examining (1) the relations underpinning corvée obligations, (2) the type of work and workload involved, and (3) the mechanisms of control employed by the colonial authority.
Framework: Corvée, Colonialism, and Capitalism
It is not evident how we should understand the phenomenon of corvée labor and its implications. If we focus on Southeast Asia, we can distinguish different perspectives on the relation between corvée or tributary regimes and expanding (merchant) capitalism. First, scholars have argued that merchant companies in the early modern period, such as the VOC, impacted only ports, trading centers, and coastal areas, using mainly trade monopolies and contracts, resulting in little to no impact on inland societies and agriculture that were characterized by local (Asian or feudal) modes of production (Van Leur Reference Van Leur1955). Second, it has been argued that as far as the external influence of the VOC impacted local polities, this led mainly to defensive politics with the aim of increasing control over populations and trade (Meilink-Roelofsz Reference Meilink-Roelofsz1962; Reid Reference Reid1993). Third, it has been argued that it was actually the external pressure of the VOC that (indirectly) led to (re)feudalization of local institutions and societies, especially in West Java (Hoadley Reference Hoadley1994). Despite their different nuances, the common element in these views is that corvée labor regimes are seen mainly as remnants of local indigenous Asian feudalism that were reified under the external pressure of colonial expansion and were “regressive” in nature (Kumar Reference Kumar1997).
There are variants of this perspective that take corvée regimes as regional phenomena, but do see them as a factor of change. For South Asia, for example, it is argued that it was the tributary mode of production itself (in the form of taxation of peasants) that led to internal commercial and monetary expansion, for example, in the Mughal Empire (Banaji Reference Banaji2010). Most attention to colonial corvée regimes, however, stems from South American and African area studies. In the case of the former, heated debates have targeted the character of the hacienda (landed estates) as feudal reifications in colonial societies (see Frank Reference Frank1967; Kay Reference Kay1974; Van Young Reference Van Young2006).Footnote 1 More recently, research has been developed that deals with corvée regimes as a form of labor tax. Many of these studies see the employment of corvée regimes as caused by the underdevelopment of the region involved. For African colonies, it is thus argued that the reasons “why colonial states relied so heavily on forced labour in the early phase of colonial state formation” were based in the need for colonial authorities to scrape together revenue, developing “a largely ‘invisible’ form of government revenue” (Frankema and Van Waijenburg Reference Frankema, van Waijenburg, Frankema and Booth2019, 180–81). Other explanations see corvée as continuations of earlier traditions of coerced labor, as a response to labor shortage problems, or as a method of enhancing “the commercialization of local economies” (Van Waijenburg Reference Van Waijenburg2018, 42) by developing infrastructural investments.
In this article, we propose that in order to understand corvée labor regimes and their development and impact across the globe during (early) colonial expansion, it is insufficient to see these regimes as either regressive modes of exploitation reluctantly adopted by colonial authorities for lack of better alternatives, or as substitute taxes aimed at enhancing the economic growth of a (colonized) region. We argue that—referring to the revived debates on second serfdom in Europe—it is insufficient to see corvée regimes mainly as “a set of obstacles to the efficient allocation of scarce resources.” Of course, these regimes functioned “as a set of constraints on the choices made by economic agents,” limiting “people's migration, marriage, consumption, and land transaction decisions” (Klein Reference Klein and Cavaciocchi2014, 60). The deeper functionality and logic of deployment of these regimes must be sought, however, not only in the fact that these concentrated extensive economic and legal power in the hands of landlords and authorities, but more precisely in what these regimes allowed these elites to do, or in other words, what the purpose of these regimes was. We propose that there is reason to reverse the perspective by seeing corvée regimes instead as refined methods of colonial exploitation that provided colonial actors more direct, and sometimes almost complete, access to and control over the production of commercially interesting global commodities.
The violence engrained in corvée labor regimes as a method of colonial exploitation often remained implicit, both in sources and in later historical analysis, but it was an integral and always looming element for contemporaries. In contrast with commodified slavery regimes, however, this violence was perhaps less visible, because it was not inflicted on “outsiders,” who were captured and transported to plantations or other places of production, as is so strikingly covered with the term “booty” (or “war”) capitalism (see Scott Reference Scott2017). It was instead imposed in more everyday and structural ways on local populations, considered or claimed as “subjects,” creating something that we could perhaps label “corvée capitalism.”
Colonial Capitalism and Corvée
There is more to gain, however, than only improving our understanding of corvée labor, especially given its (theoretical) implications for understanding the history of coerced labor and modes of production—or the history of colonialism and capitalism. Recent interventions signal the need to rethink perspectives on the history of (coerced) labor and social relations. Most prominently, Jairus Banaji (Reference Banaji2010) emphasized in his Theory as History that labor relations cannot be simply equated with modes of production, but that “diverse forms of exploitation and ways of organizing labour” can exist under different modes of production. He pointed out that it is important to see “the combined development, rather than the linear succession between modes of production” (Banaji Reference Banaji2010, 358–59).Footnote 2
Dealing with the role of coercive labor regimes in the emerging capitalist world-economy of the early modern era, earlier scholarship concluded “that in the era of agricultural capitalism, wage labor is only one of the modes in which labor is recruited and recompensed in the labor market,” referring to slavery, “coerced cash-crop production,” sharecropping, and tenancy as alternative modes (Wallerstein Reference Wallerstein1979, 17). A similar flexibility in the utilization of a variety of (coercive and more “free” or casual) labor regimes has been noted for early modern Dutch merchant capitalism (Van Zanden Reference Van Zanden1993). J. L. Van Zanden (Reference Van Zanden1993, 20) argued that the key feature of merchant capitalism was the combination of “capitalist production methods” (based on commodified labor relations, such as wage and slave labor) with “pre-capitalist production methods” that resulted from conditions in which “the production per labourer was insufficient to cover the [high] costs of reproduction” and that allowed for the possibility that “the reproduction costs of labour could in part be passed on to the pre-capitalist production methods, because merchant capitalism was an island in a non-capitalist world.”
In his analysis of the emerging “capitalist world-economy” of this period, Wallerstein distinguished between labor relations in the core and periphery, rather than capitalist and pre-capitalist, with the rise of “free” wage and self-employed labor in Western Europe and the use of forced labor elsewhere. The coercive labor regimes outside the core are, to Wallerstein, part of “agricultural capitalism,” as he argues that “an individual is no less a capitalist exploiting labor because the state assists him to pay his laborers low wages (including wages in-kind) and denies these laborers the right to change employment” (Wallerstein Reference Wallerstein1979, 16). “Capitalism thus means labor as a commodity to be sure. But in the era of agricultural capitalism, wage labor is only one of the modes in which labor is recruited and recompensed in the labor market. Slavery, coerced cash-crop production (my name for the so-called ‘second feudalism’), sharecropping, and tenancy are all alternative modes” (Wallerstein Reference Wallerstein1979, 17). Coercive labor regimes, including feudal or corvée cash-crop production, are considered part of a “capitalist world-economy,” of which the “essential feature” is the “production for sale in a market in which the object is to realize maximum profit” (Wallerstein Reference Wallerstein1979, 15). The first criteria is the commodification of production for the world market, but—according to Wallerstein—this therefore leads to commodified labor.
In the case of the VOC, it must be noted that the actor mobilizing labor is itself a “Company-State” that could rely on both relations and treaties with local or regional political powers and on its own state and military power to “use non-market devices . . . to affect the market” (Wallerstein Reference Wallerstein1979, 17). More importantly, the production we encounter not only takes the shape of landlords demanding lowly compensated cash-crop production, but is in fact production that is demanded by the Company-State itself, either from its subjects directly or from subjected rulers through tribute. In both cases, production is explicitly geared toward the (world) market, but especially in the latter instance, it seems to remain an open question whether we can speak of the labor relations involved as paid or commodified labor.
Corvée as Coerced Labor
Recent literature on slavery and coerced labor has brought back to the debate two other important observations: (1) we should aim to understand the variants of coercion and bondage within the context of “the whole praxis of coerced labor” in order to “identify clearly the differences and similarities between various forms of exploitation and repression” (Van der Linden Reference Van der Linden, van der Linden and García2016, 294, 322), and (2) we should consider that systems of bondage and slavery are not only about the possession of people (and/or commodification of labor), but more precisely about the availability of people, or, in essence, their bodies, for different possible purposes (such as obligated labor, social status, kinship, etc.) (Zeuske Reference Zeuske2018). It is thus important to investigate the form of a specific labor regime as well as what it aims to do.
With regard to the purpose of coercive labor regimes, it is possible to distinguish between regimes of binding that intend to localize people, aiming to tie down people and their labor to a polity or land, and those regimes that intend to mobilize people, aiming to turn people and their labor into commodified and transferable objects. Land- and bondage-based forms of slavery, serfdom, and corvée are the clearest examples of localizing bondage regimes, while commodified or market forms of slavery are the clearest examples of mobilizing bondage regimes (Van Rossum, Reference Van Rossum2020).
These localizing regimes were widespread before the arrival of Europeans in Asia, especially in “those core areas where a monarch rules over a sedentary peasant population,” such as Java, Thailand, and Sri Lanka (Boomgaard Reference Boomgaard2009, 60). As dealt with in this article, these systems continued to exist and, most importantly, were actively used and expanded under the Dutch East India Company. The Dutch East India Company empire thus combined its characteristics as a merchant or joint-stock capitalist organization with its involvement in ways of organizing agricultural production that in historiography have often been discarded as “traditional” and “inefficient” (feudal or despotic modes of production). In order to understand how early colonial capitalism related to tributary or corvée labor regimes, and how early modern (merchant) capitalism started to impact the global countryside, it is therefore important to take a closer look at the case of the Dutch East India Company. After its rapid expansion in the seventeenth century, the VOC acted as sovereign and suzerain in various localities throughout the Indian Ocean and Indonesian archipelago world. The VOC had already managed to fight its way into dominant positions by the early seventeenth century, especially in Ambon (1605), Jakarta (1619), and the Banda Islands (1616–21), and it gained more extensive power over larger territories with the expansion of power over Taiwan (1622–63), coastal Sri Lanka (1640s and especially 1650s), the Moluccas (1650s), the Cape of Good Hope (1652 onward), and Java (mid-seventeenth century onward).
For the Dutch East India Company empire in South and Southeast Asia, it can be established that (1) at the peak of its power, the influence and impact of the VOC in various instances reached inland far beyond port cities and maritime regions, and (2) the corvée labor regimes utilized by the VOC were found both in regions ruled indirectly (Cirebon, Bantam) and in regions under direct rule (Ceylon, Priangan). Thus, the Company not only had an impact on preexisting corvée labor regimes indirectly by demanding tribute from local rulers or by increasing external market pressures, it was also engaged in corvée-based agricultural production in direct and structural ways (Breman Reference Breman2015; Knaap Reference Knaap2014; Van Rossum Reference Van Rossum, Brandon, Frykman and Røge2019a).
With regard to the Dutch case of corvée labor and its impact on Asian societies, research has traditionally focused on the legal-political relations of the Dutch East India Company and Asian polities and subjects (Resink Reference Resink1987). Later research paid more attention to the impact of the Company on local socioeconomic institutions. Most notably, Mason Hoadley (Reference Hoadley1994) focused on the transforming effects of the Dutch presence on local institutions in West Java (Cirebon-Priangan region), arguing that the VOC created a feudal system of obligations that would replace the precolonial poll tax by the end of the eighteenth century. Jan Breman (Reference Breman2015) elaborated further on this topic by specifically concentrating on the consequences of the introduction of the system of forced coffee cultivation in the Priangan region in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. According to Breman's (Reference Breman2015, 54, 57–58) analysis of the VOC's labor regime on Java, the Company “considered itself not only as the ruler but also as the owner of the land and its people and conducted business accordingly,” increasing the scale and intensity of claims imposed on peasants and bringing about “far-reaching changes in the structure of society.” Breman characterizes this as a “tributary mode of production” (72), following Eric R. Wolf (Reference Wolf1982) and Jairus Banaji (Reference Banaji2010).
For precolonial Ceylon, the term “caste feudalism” was coined to emphasize the fact that the exaction of labor services was organized along caste lines. The numerous caste groups were differentiated primarily based on the forced labor duties they formally owed to their overlords in exchange for land grants and the ritual status associated with those services. After the conquest of coastal Ceylon, the Dutch East India Company took up the role of overlord, actively employing and administrating the corvée labor and land grants of local populations. It has been argued that the Company's dependence on the labor of certain caste groups in Ceylon led to modifications in their socioeconomic status (Hovy Reference Hovy1991, xciii–xcv). For the Moluccas, Gerrit Knaap has suggested that the effects of the Dutch Company's presence on socioeconomic institutions in Amboina largely lay in the Company's institutionalization of labor obligations to a central authority and curtailing the role of local elite middlemen. Knaap (Reference Knaap1987a, 160, 267–68) points toward a presumed increase in pressure on certain labor obligations under the VOC, but he concedes that the extent to which this increase occurred in comparison with previous rulers remains obscure. It is interesting that similar processes have been studied for two main areas of Dutch colonial interference, Sri Lanka and the Moluccas, but that little effort has been devoted to comparing and connecting the dynamics across the Dutch East India Company empire.
Toward a Framework of Analysis for Corvée Regimes
How, then, to analyze these different varieties of corvée labor within a single comparative framework? Discussing the phenomenon of corvée, or localizing regimes of dependent labor, we contend that corvée and tribute must be considered part of the same spectrum of modes of exploitation. Despite their commonalities, however, different constellations of corvée (and tribute) led to different dynamics. New frameworks of analysis are therefore useful to push forward a comparative and connecting understanding (Van Rossum Reference Van Rossum2019b, Reference Van Rossum2020). We propose that three elements are crucial to start to disentangle the spectrum of corvée and tributary relations.
First, the obligatory relations manifested in tributary or corvée systems occur on different levels, being enforced by different actors on different groups or individuals. Basically, this is the question of who is obligated to (do what for) whom? We can distinguish four levels: first, state obligations, existing in obligatory relations between polities, for example, in the case of claims on overlordship by strong or imperial rulers or states over other polities; second, provincial or regional obligations, existing in obligatory relations between political layers or entities part of the same state structure, for example, in the case of claims made in (weak) patrimonial states by rulers over their executive officials, bureaucrats or “regents”; third, communal obligations, existing in obligatory relations on a communal basis, for example, by polities or local rulers. And fourth, individual obligations, existing in obligatory relations on an individual basis, for example, by polities, local rulers, or communities.
Second, the claims or objects to which these obligations apply can take different forms. Historically, there has been a distinction between labor, product, and money (and tax). Labor is often demanded in a specific amount of time (number of days), performed either for the landlord, local official, or ruler (labor corvée) or for an overlord (labor tribute). Product is often demanded from populations directly in the delivery of products, either produced independently on leased or owned land, or produced under supervision on state lands (product corvée); “product rent” can also be demanded from (local) rulers in the case of overlordship (tribute), in turn leading to product or labor claims toward local populations; the demanded “products” can take the form of cash crops (product tribute), but also, for example, the demanded delivery of enslaved people (human tribute).
Third, the claims (and corvée) can have different objects or aims, and although these can be or appear intertwined, we can make a distinction between corvée or tribute directed toward the status, consumption, or luxury of a ruler or ruling elite (private); the public good—in the form of contributions to public works or state operations (redistribution; taxation); and the (world) market—in the form of production for profit through (export) trade (market).
To understand the development of corvée labor regimes in relation to the Dutch East India Company and the impact of its activities, it is thus crucial to scrutinize how these labor obligations were organized by the Company (on what levels, in which forms, and with which objects), including an analysis of the regulation of resistance against them. In the following sections, we will therefore survey the labor regulations adopted, adapted, and expanded by the Dutch East India Company in its three core regions of activity—Amboina, Ceylon, and Java—in order to grasp not only the workings of the Company's employed coerced labor regimes in these places through comparison, but also to lay bare the transformations in labor and social relations effectuated by the Company's entanglement in coerced labor regimes as a Company-State.
We will do so by referring to a relatively rich set of sources produced by the Company administration relating to labor obligations in these settlements. The stipulations, reviews, and discussions of labor regulations have been recorded in documents of public or private nature (in contemporary context), such as ordinances (public), missives (private), and memoirs (private). These three sets of documents, collected into (published) archival series, are the primary source collections from which observations surrounding labor regulations are extracted. The general administrative character of these source collections, combined with their relatively wide time frame and geographic coverage, make them well suited to an analysis of the (changing) character of labor obligations and labor mobilization under the VOC. Keeping in mind the colonial bureaucratic lens these documents offer us, a critical close reading of ordinances and memoirs—that implicitly or explicitly point toward moments of tension, subversion and (re)enforcement of labor regulations—still allows for a reconstruction how and why these labor regulations were (intended to be) deployed as they were.
Labor Obligations
Capitalizing on existing mechanisms that obligated certain groups to perform certain labor services was common practice for the VOC. These obligations generally corresponded with the social standing of a certain group, whether it was a specific caste or the peasantry under the authority of a chief or “overlord” in general. The VOC adopted these regulations in Amboina, Ceylon, and Java, but adapted the obligations tied to certain groups, and the makeup of such groups, as necessary to suit the interests of the Company. It is clear that the Company not only made sure to appropriate existing mechanisms that tied certain people to the performance of certain services in its dispersed settlements, but also tried to maximize the profitability of these regimes by regulating the size and privileges of these groups.
Amboina
In precolonial Amboina, society was structured around several “political-structural” categories. A negeri or village community under the kepala negeri (head village), which acted as primus inter pares, was divided into soa (neighborhoods) composed of dati. The dati, a unit of eight or nine people who were part of an (extended) family, formed the basis of the dati system of labor extraction, as labor obligations were structured around the dati as a unit of conscript laborers who performed duties under the authority of their local headman in exchange for land grants (tanah dati). It is argued that this system originated in the fifteenth or sixteenth century, but in any case, it preceded Dutch arrival. From the early seventeenth century onward, however, the Dutch depended on this established structure for the extraction of a labor force (heerendienstplichtigen) for different corvée obligations. The dati would continue to deliver a workforce to perform services for the local Amboinese elites and their communities, but would additionally have labor duties toward the Company—all of which were regulated (indirectly) by the Company regardless (Knaap Reference Knaap1987a, 160, 267–68).
Ceylon
In Ceylon, too, the VOC could rely on an existing local labor force with “traditional” labor obligations tied to their social standing from around the middle of the seventeenth century onwards. Members of the Salagama caste, referred to as chialias or “cinnamon peelers” by the Dutch, had been required to harvest cinnamon “since olden times according to the laws of the land” and were of great interest to the Company. Besides the highly coveted cinnamon, they were also responsible for the supply of areca nuts and wood (Hovy Reference Hovy1991, 78, 98–99, 324). Chialias, specifically the corondehalys who were described by the Company as the “lowest” among the chialias, were required to harvest cinnamon during the four- to six-month harvesting period between June and September every year, for which they had to be at their positions and ready for work around mid-May. An official letter dating from 1650, in which the governor-general and councils referred to the fact that the chialias had “again” assumed the task of harvesting cinnamon in Gale and subsequently in Negombo, illustrates that the VOC appropriated the existing labor regime shortly after the conquest of Gale and Negombo in the 1640s (Coolhaas et al. Reference Coolhaas1964, 2:406).
The chialias were a diverse group, encapsulating different subgroups with different obligations and privileges. The corondehalys were traditionally the group that “had to do the most” in terms of physical labor in cinnamon production (Hovy Reference Hovy1991, 83). Related to this work, the inlandarias, lascarins (from the chialia caste specifically), durias, and vidanes were traditionally relatively more privileged groups and were mostly responsible for the logistics and supervision of the work. The Company would benefit from the labor of many other castes traditionally associated with certain services. The deccomcarrias (of the chialia caste), for example, were traditionally mostly employed in transporting letters, in which service the Company continued to employ them, while baddatoeras were obliged to supply the governor's lunch table with fresh fish.
The importance of access to a workforce was not lost on the VOC, to which end the Company sought to regulate the size of different groups. Already in 1661, the VOC had decided that it was important to limit the number of durias, who were customarily entitled to extract labor and cinnamon from lower castes, to ensure that the Company could capitalize more on both labor and product (Hovy Reference Hovy1991, 78–81, 323). Placards were also issued from the late seventeenth century until well into the second half of the eighteenth century that stipulated that children from mixed marriages (between the cinnamon peelers caste and those of other castes that often had less or less significant labor obligations) would still be considered cinnamon peelers by the VOC and thus would continue to have labor obligations to the Company (Hovy Reference Hovy1991, 207, 220, 570, 749, 763).
Sometimes, however, the Company deemed it more profitable or efficient to allow people to buy off certain labor obligations. Foreigners (vreemdelingen; Moors and other “heathens”) residing in Ceylon, among others, were obliged to perform corvée (uliam) services in return for their residency from 1744. They were allowed to appoint a replacing worker for the duration of their absence, of course only after permission from their respective chiefs, and would be fined 25 rixdollars if they left their residences without a replacement and/or a written permission of absence (Hovy Reference Hovy1991, 514–15). In 1746, however, it was decided that “Moors and Chettiars” could buy off their uliam duties through a yearly payment of 14.4 guilders, with which the Company could finance contract laborers (Coolhaas Reference Coolhaas1964, 11:282–83, 426). In 1786, it was again stipulated that “certain groups of uliammers” could buy off their labor obligations through a remarkably lower yearly payment of 3 rixdollars. Both the regulation of 1746 and the amendment of 1786 seemed to have been triggered by the fact that uliammers did not necessarily heed the Company's instructions regarding absences in increasing numbers and were apparently able to evade their obligations through various “tricks” (Hovy Reference Hovy1991, 627–28, 860).
Java
Similar to Amboina and Ceylon, the Company made it clear that it was taking over the sovereign rights of its predecessors as it extended its authority over Java, which included entitlement to demand labor and services from its subjects (Breman Reference Breman2015, 71). As sovereign of the land, the Company could claim services from the peasant population living in parts of Java that the Company had (indirect) influence over. From the turn of the eighteenth century, the Company had become aware of the fact that bypassing local chiefs and directly claiming produce deliveries and other services from the local population proved to be ineffective on Java. To implement changes to labor regulations and supervise their execution in a way that was both profitable and effective, the Company had to rely on local chiefs—who were, conversely, subject to the VOC as their superior. The VOC effected a break with the past, however, by crystallizing the previously relatively fluid hierarchy within the Javanese gentry and by establishing territorial rule that subjected the entire population within the borders of newly formed regencies to chiefs who were given the same rank and title, regents, to facilitate access to and collection of tribute (Breman Reference Breman2015, 28, 45, 76–77).
Pressure and Work
The Company picked up where previous local or imperial rulers had left off in their claim to labor in different parts of the Company's growing empire. Even though certain groups were traditionally bound to perform specific services for their superiors, under the VOC, the form of corvée duties, and the pressure on their performance, fluctuated, affecting not only the workload and remuneration of services, but also the severity of punishments for insubordination.
Amboina
Shortly after the conquest of Amboina from the Portuguese, the Dutch secured exclusive rights to the supply of cloves through contracts that were signed by the Amboinese, largely because of lingering fears of Portuguese retaliation, according to Knaap (Reference Knaap1987a, 28, 45, 76–77). In 1608, Steven van der Haghen, the first admiral of the VOC, made sure to stipulate that the labor obligations previously imposed on the population by the Portuguese would remain in force. Besides the supply of cloves, assisting with fortification was one of the only explicitly mentioned obligations at that time (Knaap Reference Knaap1987b, 3–4). Soon, the Company would expand on this claim, with labor obligations generally falling into three categories: hofdiensten (court services), negeri-diensten (village services), and kwartodiensten (military services), which had in common their compulsory and often unrewarded nature. Hofdiensten entailed certain labor or service obligations required for (and by) the central authority, the local VOC government of Amboina, of which the most notorious example was manning and operating the hongi (a military fleet comprised of local small vessels). Amboinese who performed the kwartodienst were deployed in varying occasional services in furtherance of the administrative and military infrastructure of the government. Negeri-diensten, on the other hand, were services performed for the local (head of) community, generally regulated by the VOC nonetheless. These services included assisting in the building of places of worship for different religious communities, but also involved providing assistance in the transportation of the heads whenever needed (Knaap Reference Knaap1987a, 140–41, 147, 228–59).
As mentioned earlier, corvée labor obligations in Amboina were structured around the dati, a system that predated European colonial presence in the area. Knaap (Reference Knaap1987a, 8, 138, 159–60) has argued that the transformation that the Company effected in this region with regard to corvée duties amplified the pressure on their performance with higher demands and a greater degree of control. The clove culture, for example, constituted one of the most important grounds for the Company's presence in the region and thus was supervised and regulated by the VOC in several ways. On the one hand, the Company provided the Amboinese villagers with instructions and best practices, simultaneously exempting them from other labor obligations to maximize the production of cloves (Coolhaas Reference Coolhaas1964, 11:230–31, 12:403). The pressure on different labor obligations fluctuated, either because of changes in the nature of the obligation or the changing priority of certain services. These changes were sometimes the result of protests from the Amboinese, but often the result of adaptations to circumstances by the VOC in order to capitalize on the present workforce.
After the Dutch secured the monopoly on the spice trade in Amboina around the middle of the seventeenth century, the hongi was not exploited for military expeditions anymore and generally required the contribution of less kora-kora (traditional Moluccan rowing boats). From the second half of the seventeenth century onward, the hongi served a more symbolic military purpose, in the form of occasional expeditions for the purpose of demonstrating the Company's military power to rival or insubordinate factions. More structurally, the hongi was deployed for the extirpation of clove trees in the second half of the seventeenth and in the eighteenth century. Twice a year, hongi expeditions set sail from Manipa to the islands of Kelang and Bonoa to uproot clove trees until at least 1669 (Knaap Reference Knaap1987b, 233). Compared with military expeditions, the exploitation of the hongi in favor of the Company's control over the production of and trade in cloves has been characterized as a relative reduction of the labor burden on the kora-kora arranging the hongi, especially considering the fact that in some years the hongi did not set to sea at all (Knaap Reference Knaap1987a, 147–56).
As the clove culture was at the center of the Company's activities in Amboina during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the VOC kept a close eye on its cultivation to curb under- or overproduction. Around the middle of the 1630s and in the second half of the 1650s, for example, the Company was anxious about possible oversupply to the market and lowered clove prices as a response, or overproduction was limited due to destruction during war. After the Great Ambon War (1651–56), which was caused by protests against mandatory destruction of clove trees demanded by the Company on Ceram, the Company had to deal with a possible undersupply of cloves in coming years as the supply of cloves was steadily diminishing.
From 1655, then, there were efforts to increase clove production mainly by demanding that the villagers plant certain quotas of clove trees on Ambon, Haruku, Saparua, and Nusalaut, ranging from 7,000 to 1,000,000 trees. Of course, these quotas were not necessarily fully completed by the villagers each time, but they do indicate the Company's rising demands. Then, between 1663 and 1667, the Company ordained the Amboinese to plant twenty trees per dati every year and introduced so-called clove visitors (nagel-visitateurs) to hold the villagers accountable for observing this obligation. From 1684, however, the Company again instituted a ban on planting any clove trees anywhere out of fear for overproduction. In practice, the Amboinese did not heed this prohibition and the Company's efforts to restore a balance between supply and demand in the world market for cloves were fruitless (Knaap Reference Knaap1987a, 228–52).
As a rule, the Amboinese were expected to perform hofdiensten for a total duration of one month every year, although the hongi did not set sail for that long, or in some years even at all. Different types of corvée obligations were therefore interchangeably imposed based on demand at specific moments to fill up this time, as long as they did not interfere with the primary production in the region. These alternative obligations were not necessarily less arduous than the hongi. In the last quarter of the seventeenth century, Amboinese were required to work in limekilns for the production of limestone, supply the Company with corralites and dredge a canal around castle Victoria as part of the alternative hofdiensten. Amboinese villages seemed to consent to set aside two or three weeks a year to perform these services instead of the hongi expeditions that took twice as much of their time, but there were also reports of the demanding character of these alternative obligations, with workdays of twelve to fourteen hours driven forth by rattan sticks (Knaap Reference Knaap1987a, 149–55).
Ceylon
The precolonial corvée labor services performed for the king in Ceylon varied between thirty days to three months per year and from military to infrastructural services. The specific services demanded from caste groups could vary based on demand at a certain point in time, as the state assigned new services to caste groups if their older services were no longer required. Additionally, if the need arose for new services, either a new subcaste was created or the functions of an existing caste were adjusted to meet the new service demand (Bandarage Reference Bandarage1983, 31–45). Some of these mechanisms were also reflected in the Company's management of labor obligations on Ceylon, as transformations in labor regulations indicate.
From the middle of the seventeenth century onward, the VOC repeatedly reformed regulations to increase or decrease the harvest and (exclusive) supply of cinnamon. Between 1661 and 1707, for example, the demanded yearly amount of cinnamon (per person) rose, while simultaneously the amount paid for the delivery decreased. Chialias generally harvested in two periods, but in 1699, these two moments temporarily “merged” into one harvest, as there was a decrease in the yearly demand in cinnamon that year. In 1739, the Company explicitly contravened the fact that cinnamon peelers had a set quota of cinnamon to supply Company warehouses with by ordaining that any surplus cinnamon had to be deposited as well—instead of reserving the surplus of one year to add to the supply of the following year (which would imply less efficient use of labor during the next harvest) (Hovy Reference Hovy1991, 324–26, 462).
The supply of areca nuts and wood also fell under the responsibilities of the chialia caste from the middle of the seventeenth century. Only in 1790 did the Company lift this labor obligation and remit all “debts” that the chialias still owed the Company. Wood was towed by lascarins of the chialia caste, who could rely on provisions provided by their mohandiram (local headman) until 1661, when the Company decided that the work could easily be done without the provision of rice (Hovy Reference Hovy1991, 98–99, 324). The supply of elephants, which the Company largely obtained as a result of tributary relations, was also tied to corvée (and possibly slave) labor. The population of the northern and southern provinces had a tributary obligation to hunt down elephants for the Company from around the second half of the seventeenth century (Hovy Reference Hovy1991, 104, 384, 778, 797). Certain members of the nallua and palla castes from Colombo who “were coolies or slaves of inhabitants” (Hovy Reference Hovy1991, 829) were additionally involved in the capture of elephants in 1784, when the Company decreed that they were to be employed in the northwards transportation of elephants (from where the animals were subsequently exported). They were granted a mediet rice—an amount that apparently corresponded to half a cup (Hodenpijl Reference Hodenpijl and Gijsberti1917, 204)—and paid only two-fifths of a stuiver for their service (Hovy Reference Hovy1991, 829). From the mid-seventeenth century onward, the Company employed the decomcarrias, who had performed services such as carrying letters “since previous times,” for wider administrative or logistical tasks (Hovy Reference Hovy1991, 829).
The VOC adjusted remuneration to maximize or minimize incentives for the production of new crops. This mechanism was most notably employed in the production of coffee and pepper in Ceylon, introduced by the VOC in the 1720s and 1730s. In 1720, Sinhalese inhabitants of the southwestern coast of Ceylon were urged to plant coffee trees on uncultivated lands and cede its fruits to the Company. Coffee produced on “VOC lands” assigned to the population was to be deposited in warehouses without remuneration, while coffee beans produced on private lands were initially rewarded with 3 stuivers per pound. In 1724, the Company almost doubled the price it was willing to pay for “private” coffee to 5 stuivers per pound. Only fifteen years later, the VOC tried to decrease the coffee production and drastically reduced prices to 2 stuivers per pound of private coffee. The VOC had wished to lower prices even more, to that paid for Javanese beans, but was hesitant for reasons not explicated in the records. On Ceylon, the VOC would again promote coffee production from 1784 onward, when the headmen of Galle, Matara, and later Morrua were instructed to admonish their subordinates to plant as many coffee trees as possible. In 1787, the Company even awarded a bonus to those “who performed an excellent job” at this (Coolhaas Reference Coolhaas1964, 7:753, 10:207, 442; Hovy Reference Hovy1991, 86).
Like coffee, the VOC experimented with introducing a pepper culture on Ceylon. The Company urged inhabitants to cultivate pepper plantations in Galle and Colombo districts in 1734 and in Matara in 1737. The VOC paid 3 rixdollars and 60 stuivers for a pikul (125 pounds) of pepper from its own lands (with the Company bearing production costs), and up to 4½ rixdollars for pepper from the same lands, but cultivated at one's own expense. However, already in 1739, there were serious doubts in Batavia as to whether the pepper culture would ever gain a foothold in this region. It is interesting that the Company still raised the price around fivefold in 1784 compared with 1737, signaling the Company's ongoing interest to stimulate Ceylonese pepper production (Hovy Reference Hovy1991, 451–52, 467, 546, 835, 847; Coolhaas Reference Coolhaas1964, 10:270).
Java
The corvée labor on Java in the form of herendiensten (compulsory labor services) was initially employed in transportation, infrastructure, and provisioning of wood (Van der Chijs Reference Van der Chijs1885–1900, 7:593–94, 11:136–37, 412, 15:760). The herendiensten thus focused less on production of (export) crops, but did of course facilitate production and trade. For the herendiensten, local regents were required to provide the Company with workers, pack animals, and ships until at least 1762. Although it is unclear when or whether the Company instituted this obligation expressly, the explicit abolishment of this demand in 1762 is evidence of its existence. Around the same time, the headman (depati) from Semarang had to provide Company officials with carriers whenever necessary, while twenty-two people from Tangerang were expected daily at the fortress to perform hofdiensten, alongside more workers and horses to deliver letters to Bantam in 1792 (Van der Chijs Reference Van der Chijs1885–1900, 7:593–94, 11:412).
The production and collection of export crops was organized through a “new” form of corvée labor extraction called the “contingent” system. With yearly quotas for the delivery of various products, such as coffee, cotton, pepper, and indigo, the Company established a hierarchical system of crop deliveries organized and supervised locally by regents who imposed the Company's demands on their subjects. The yearly quota system materialized in the eighteenth century and was, as a result of its character, intrinsically subject to regular modifications in demand and therefore also workload, but the Company would regularly institute transformations in the type of work and remuneration as well.
The Company substituted the demands on specific villages with others from time to time and created a flexible system to benefit from the available peasant workforce. The VOC, for example, disposed of its demand for timber because of deforestation and commanded the regents of the northern regions to employ their peasant subjects in the furtherance of the coffee culture. In 1749, the Company replaced its demand on Cheribon peasants for 1 pound of indigo with a new instruction to deliver 3 pounds of cotton. The Company stipulated three reasons for this decision: first, because the diminishing cotton supply could not satisfy the demand in the Dutch Republic; second, because of the “reluctance of the native on Cheribon around the indigo culture”; and finally, and probably more importantly, because indigo “does not produce such a good profit as aformentioned cotton” (Van der Chijs Reference Van der Chijs1885–1900, 5:608). Similarly, modderjavanen from the regions Cheribon and Gabang burdened with the arduous task of dredging around Batavia were relieved of their obligation to travel to Batavia every year in 1798. It had been the heads of Cheribon and Gabang who made this request to the Company as their subjects were “extremely averse” to this task, which claimed more than half the lives in this group, with which the VOC complied only to employ these workers more efficiently, again, in the coffee culture (Van der Chijs Reference Van der Chijs1885–1900, 11:136–37).
On Java, remuneration generally went through the regents as well. The regents, who collected the crops, were paid by the VOC after delivering those crops to Company warehouses. The regents were then expected to compensate their subjects for their work. Between 1735 and 1756, we see the remuneration for a pikul of pepper rising from 5 to 7 rixdollars, partly because transportation costs added up, to the disadvantage of the more eastern regencies, but ultimately to raise incentive (Van der Chijs Reference Van der Chijs1885–1900, 4:384, 6:59, 7:178). In August 1797, after the pepper culture was “no longer an obligation,” it was established that “the common man” was to be paid 5 rixdollars for a pikul of 140 pounds of pepper by the regents, while the regents themselves could expect 7 rixdollars for a pikul of 135 pounds from the Company (Van der Chijs Reference Van der Chijs1885–1900, 12:563–67). The “common man” was not, however, always paid his share in practice. In the coffee culture, it was even common to receive no remuneration at all for all the work until the first harvest—and when they delivered the harvested beans, they received very little (Breman Reference Breman2015, 64, 78).
Mobility, Control, and Resistance
The regulation of corvée labor around the VOC empire was directly connected to the regulation of mobility and social status. The Company's efforts to effectively control the labor force performing obligatory services were reflected in the strategies employed in Amboina, Ceylon, and Java in several ways. Whether it was through moving certain groups of people, limiting free movement of other groups of people, or establishing punishments for insubordination, the VOC was keen on keeping a tight rein on the people it extracted labor from and, by extension, on their appointed superintendents as well.
Amboina
In order to guarantee efficient access to a labor force, the VOC encouraged Amboinese villagers to settle in the Company's more accessible coastal lands and issued an ordinance in 1658 that prohibited villagers from building tuinhuizen or (temporary) abodes on the lands they worked for their own sustenance away from their villages, as this was deemed unfavorable to the mobilization of laborers for corvée duties (Knaap Reference Knaap1987a, 169–70). In his 1725 Memorie, Governor-General Pieter Gabrij summarized the reasons behind this prohibition as follows: “because the service of [for] the Company would deteriorate and they [the villagers] would be too far away at essential occasions and could not be found or obtained in due time. For this reason, after having warned them, [we] let the foresthouses (boshuysen) be devastated and burned in order to compel them to return to their villages again” (Knaap Reference Knaap1987b, 307). In 1767, it was ordained that any villager who was caught vacating their village without explicit permission from a local headman (ratified by the VOC), for whatever reason, was to be locked in chains for six months to work at the Company's common works without wages (Knaap Reference Knaap1987b, 418). The Company not only limited the movement of villagers, however, it also willfully moved people around to ensure access to a labor force to perform obligatory services. In 1731, for example, a group of around five hundred exiles in Buru were relocated to Luhu, on the western corner of Ceram Island, at their own request. The VOC approved their petition, “because of a shortage of inhabitants in Luhu for the hofdiensten” (Coolhaas Reference Coolhaas1964, 9:256). As village heads were responsible for mobilizing villagers to perform their hofdiensten, as well as for the execution of labor obligations, any insubordination or shortcomings were punished through those village heads. Refusal to mobilize villagers for hofdiensten or poor maintenance of the kora-kora, for example, were punished by (temporarily) banning the village head in charge and could even lead to removal from his function (Knaap Reference Knaap1987a, 34).
Ceylon
In Ceylon, the VOC regulated the movement of cinnamon peelers by introducing passes from 1739 onward—especially those who still had to complete their yearly obligation were tightly managed and could not leave their abodes until they had fulfilled their duties. Insubordination was punished by flogging, branding, cutting off noses and ears, chain gang, and banishment for both cinnamon peelers and overseers (Hovy Reference Hovy1991, 378–79, 460–64). Lascarins were usually present during the cinnamon harvest to supervise the workers, and, in case cinnamon peelers neglected to observe their duty, absconded, or conspired against their chiefs and/or the Company, they were employed in tracing and apprehending the workers. These “overseers” were directed by the (VOC) commander or dessave of a district (Hovy Reference Hovy1991, 324; SLNA, VOC).
Failure to fulfill other obligations was punished by ascending degrees, often starting with fines. In 1721, for example, the Company established a fine of 60 rixdollars for damaging coffee plants, while repeat offenders could expect a fine double or triple that amount for a second or third offense. Six years later, however, this offense was punished more severely, starting with flogging and banishment to the Cape for ten years for a first offense; flogging, branding, cutting off of ears and nose, and banishment to the Cape for twenty-five years for a second offense; and repeating this offense for a third time would be fatal (Hovy Reference Hovy1991, 377, 380–81). These punishments were instituted at the peak of the Company's interest in Ceylonese coffee and would not be repeated (or further increased in severity) afterward.
Java
On Java, the Company would forcibly move peasant workers to other parts of the island. In the 1720s, for example, to work on woodcutting as part of the contingent system (Nagtegaal Reference Nagtegaal1996, 196–98). The continuing rise in demand for timber led to an enormous exodus of woodcutters from Jepara in the middle of the north coast of Java to other regencies in the 1720s. The Company demanded from the regent of Jepara that he compel his subjects to fulfill the timber quota, which he tried to realize by intimidating the disobedient woodcutters with armed men (Nagtegaal Reference Nagtegaal1996, 199). Access to a workforce was tied to the regulation of insubordination just as much as to mobility. In the mid-eighteenth century, a ban was issued on peasants transferring their allegiance to other chiefs by moving to another region, which used to be one of the strategies peasants could employ to negotiate the terms and severity of their servitude (Breman Reference Breman2015, 54–56). This was simultaneously a limitation of the mobility of the peasants, as well as a blow to their repertoire of resistance.
However, the Company's distrust was more heavily directed to the regents than to the peasant workers. In the early eighteenth century, the Company appointed a “commissioner of native affairs,” a high-ranking official responsible for keeping an eye on inland affairs. Very soon, all communication with regents would go through the commissioner, who was the person who now exercised the Company's authority (Breman Reference Breman2015, 78–81). The commissioner would give orders to regencies, draw up instructions, make sure that deliveries were made in the correct size and form, and threaten punishment (Van der Chijs Reference Van der Chijs1885–1900, 11:84, 139, 7:410–11, 12:563–67, 8:272–75). The Company also installed VOC agents permanently in the hinterland to oversee delivery of contingents, who worked close to the ground, but were conversely closely watched by native overseers of the commissioner to make sure they did not conspire with the regents (Breman Reference Breman2015, 78–79).
Failure to comply with the Company's yearly demands of contingents was generally punished by demanding extra quotas of the particular product for the next year. This punishment, just like the initial demand, was officially directed at the local regents and chiefs, but of course, the peasants carried the burden for this punishment. In certain cases, the Company issued monetary fines instead of extra quotas. Even when the Company noticed in 1758 that the districts of Tjanjoer, Buitenzorg, Bandung, and Crawang were plagued by depopulation because of high mortality rates, which had negative effects on the supply of pepper, indigo, and cotton, the (monetary) fine established for failure to fulfill the yearly quotas was upheld. The VOC only granted a temporary reduction of the fine for a year at first, but later decided to remit this fine altogether (Van der Chijs Reference Van der Chijs1885–1900, 7, 290–91, 363). Deposing or imprisoning regents was another way in which the VOC punished incompliance. The oemboel of Bodjong, for example, was removed from his post for “neglecting the coffee culture,” and “others [were] chained as a deterrent to work at the publieke werken for a year at Tanjong Poera,” because the supply of coffee was (again) lower in 1799 than the previous year. Regents of other districts were also severely admonished for their lacking deliveries (Van der Chijs Reference Van der Chijs1885–1900, 13:113–17). The harsh treatment of regents by the Company trickled down and affected the treatment of the peasant workers by their regents, who resorted to increasingly harsh measures of discipline and coercion. The use of (greater) coercion even proved so successful, it took away any incentive on the part of the Company to raise the remuneration for coffee beans. In 1735, it led to such a high harvest that the Company thought it was wiser to order regents to stop planting new trees (Breman Reference Breman2015, 66–67).
Conclusions: Corvée Capitalism in World History
This article has suggested that we need to understand corvée labor regimes as refined methods of colonial exploitation which—as the case of the VOC in early modern South and Southeast Asia indicates—could provide colonial actors with more or less direct access to and control over the production of commercially interesting global commodities. That would mean, if this perspective can indeed be applied more widely, that corvée labor regimes were crucial instruments in (early) modern colonial and capitalist expansion. This could explain the widespread spread of (colonial) corvée regimes across the globe in the centuries that followed. Rather than understanding these regimes as regressive leftovers of Asian or (transplanted) European feudal pasts, or as instruments of light in-kind taxation or revenue extraction by weak colonial authorities, corvée labor regimes then reappear as strategic and modern instruments of colonial capitalist exploitation that deeply impacted economic and social relations, including gender roles and ethnic and racial categorizations.
The comparative study of corvée regimes under the VOC provides several important conclusions. First, the involvement of the VOC in “tributary” relations in several of its core areas in South and Southeast Asia was not incidental, did not occur by historical accident, and was not confined to one location, but was instead a structural phenomenon, occurring at several points in time, in multiple locations, and lasting for longer periods.
Second, these corvée or tributary modalities of production under the VOC were not simply continuations of preexisting regimes, but are part of active processes of application, transplantation, adaptation, and innovation of varieties of corvée labor regimes, which started as early as the conquests in the Moluccas at the start of the seventeenth century and continued into the period of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century cultivation systems in the Netherlands East Indies and other colonial systems around the world.
Third, corvée labor regimes existed side by side with a multiplicity of alternative (coercive) labor regimes, ranging from slavery to contract labor. The use of corvée labor regimes (its “logic of deployment”) must have been underpinned by specific political-economic and comparative calculations that deserve further exploration. More research is needed, but it seems that the cruel advantages of corvée to colonial authorities may have been the combination of relative low production costs, while having (less but still) sufficient control over production and labor. Alternatives such as slavery or contract labor provided opportunities for more direct control over production, but also seem more expensive, requiring fuller control over land, the recruitment of (expensive) wage labor, or the procurement and control of enslaved populations.
Fourth, the differences between the direct and indirect corvée regimes are important. Although the direct variants, such as in Ceylon, provided more opportunities to control production, these also entailed more institutionalized patterns of negotiation and the need for more extensive bureaucracies. This might explain why the VOC shifted from the earlier direct variants to employing more indirect variants on Java in the eighteenth century, which reduced control over production, but outsourced management and negotiation, and possibly decreased costs.
Fifth, these cases indicate the direct and active involvement and interference by the VOC in (agricultural) production for the world market by utilizing and shaping corvée labor regimes. Although in precolonial contexts the tributary regimes originally may have been oriented toward the purposes of early states as redistribution or taxation (again, this could be topic of further study and comparison), under the VOC, such regimes were clearly and fully geared toward organizing (mainly agricultural) production for the world market.Footnote 3 Looking at the Company's most highly coveted crops in Amboina, Ceylon, and Java (cloves, cinnamon, and coffee), these were all produced for the world market through regimes of “coerced cash-crop production” that demanded either labor time (Amboina), labor output concentrated in time and dictated by harvest seasons (Ceylon), or simply labor output (Java). It is important to note that this did not commodify labor in the sense of paid labor (wage laborers) or bought labor (enslaved laborers). These colonial corvée regimes did, however, make the labor output commodified in the sense that this was production for the world market. There is something more important at stake here than the question of labor commodification: the purpose and effect of these corvée regimes was that colonial capital gained direct access to labor and production, and gained more direct control over it.
Finally, these regimes can not only be understood from a top-down perspective, but require a bottom-up perspective to get a full grasp of their functioning and impact. As we have demonstrated, the Company adopted existing regimes and mechanisms of organizing and mobilizing labor, but not without regularly altering the pressure, form, and organization of obligations, remuneration for performed services, and/or punishment for transgressions. Managing these corvée labor regimes, the Company regulated social categorizations, spatial mobility, labor and social discipline, judicial control, and punishment. In doing so, the VOC deeply impacted social and labor relations within these societies. But the different (indirect and direct) variants of organizing tributary modes of exploitation were not employed in similar fashion and could impact the societies involved differently. In the Moluccas, for example, the Company instituted arduous “alternative” hofdiensten in addition to the hongi, shifting the use of corvée labor for military state purposes to (world) market production. On Ceylon, the Company became involved in shaping customary marriage and family law in order to manage and control population groups and the availability of a corvée labor force. On Java, the Company altered relations between local rulers, limited the mobility of the peasantry, and frustrated traditional methods of negotiation based on this mobility.
These differentiated routes of local corvée labor regimes, and their impact, deserve further investigation. It is clear that the VOC was not simply a “merchant company” or a “feudal overlord” that faced polities that mobilized local or native forms of corvée. The VOC actively remolded corvée and tribute on Amboina, Ceylon, and Java to fit into its world market goals. The Company employed (at least part of the) corvée regimes directly, requiring extensive knowledge of local societies and a deep and structural involvement in local social relations. The sources used for these cases studied here clearly, and often explicitly, demonstrate that the Company developed and acted actively upon tributary relations. In its dealing with, justification, and transformation of the institutions of corvée and tribute, the Company identified itself as a (direct or indirect) ruler, and it justified its labor demand by way of sovereignty (in all three regions), and rights to the land (on Ceylon and parts of Java).
This encourages us to reflect more explicitly on what it means when we refer to “feudal” or “tributary” relations and to explore these regimes beyond existing assumptions about their often implied static, archaic, and distanced or indirect character. We call, therefore, for much more research that not only explores the local manifestations of this colonial corvée capitalism, but also takes a glocal perspective to explore the interconnections, long-term developments over time, and their impacts on economic, social, racial, and gender relations.
To conclude, what we see emerge here is a coercive mode of production that was not merely a premodern phenomenon, but was one of the paths of development through which early world capitalism actively engaged in gaining control over and in reorganizing (agricultural) production throughout the globe, in this case especially in South and Southeast Asia. This path of colonial economic development existed and developed alongside, independently but also in connection to two more well-known paths of development that have received much more attention: first, the (Northwest European) path of industrializing factory production, based initially mostly on coercive labor contracts and later on casual wage labor, and, second, that of the (Atlantic-Asian) path of plantation production, based first on chattel slavery and later on coercive contract (or coolie) migration labor. This third path of “corvée capitalism,” or “corvée colonialism,” had far-reaching effects that would last far beyond the case of the Dutch East India Company, with the nineteenth century witnessing the development of corvée regimes into the well-known large-scale cultivation system by the Dutch colonial state on Java and the introduction of similar systems by colonial states across the globe.
