The contract of the Atjehnese pepper planter was the arrangement by which an Atjehnese without capital or other means of subsistence obtained a pepper garden in Atjeh, and which D. W. N. de Boer singled out for special treatment among the forms of deelbouw. Two distinct ways of acquiring such a garden existed: engagement as an aneu’ seuneubô under a capitalist contractor, and application as a free planter directly to the oeléëbalang.
De Boer referred for comparison to De Pepercultuur in de Buitenbezittingen, instalment V of the Mededeelingen of the Encyclopaedisch Bureau, and to De Buitenbezittingen: Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, Part II, instalment 2, p. 148 ff.
The problem
The Atjehnese who possessed no small capital himself, nor any source of subsistence yielding him enough to meet the expenses of clearing waste ground and laying out a garden, and on which he would moreover have to live until the pepper could be harvested, could nevertheless acquire a pepper garden in one of two ways.
I. Engagement as aneu’ seuneubô
The aspirant pepper planter reported either directly to some capitalist contractor — the so-called peutoeha pangkaj — or to one of his overseers, called peutoeha djaga or peutoeha parang, and had himself engaged or enrolled, orally, as aneu’ seuneubô. De Boer glossed the term: aneu’, Malay anak; seuneubô, pepper garden; on the analogy of anak negeri, “children of the land,” and anak kampong, inhabitants of the village, aneu’ seuneubô signified the resident settlers of a pepper plantation.
As such he received from the money-lending contractor, through the peutoeha djaga, an advance usually consisting of a certain quantity of padi — as a rule two goentja — some articles of clothing, the necessary tools and some cash. The total advance normally amounted to not more than twenty to twenty-five dollars, or as many guilders, per thousand pepper vines that the aneu’ seuneubô undertook to plant. It was customary not to give the advances all at once but in step with the progress of the work.
Repayment of the advances was not everywhere regulated in the same way: most often it took place in instalments, of which the first fell due after the first normal harvest, that is in the fourth or third year; but it also occurred — among other places in Idi — that the total advance was called in at one stroke as soon as the planter could be considered already able to meet it, that is in the fifth or sixth year.
Irrespective of the manner and pace of repayment, and even when it had been completed to the last cent, the planter owed the pangkaj-giver, so long as the pepper garden remained productive, a fixed portion of the annual yield, called wathé pangkaj (Malay hasil pangkal), that is interest on the capital.
The wathé pangkaj usually amounted, the honorarium of the peutoeha parang included, to one-tenth of the harvest, payable in cash or in kind. Payment was generally in kind, since the peutoeha pangkaj had besides the right of pre-emption of the produce of the gardens laid out with his capital, a right of preference waived only if the aneu’ seuneubô received a higher bid from another quarter.
With all this the planter was the owner of the plantation, and lost the right of ownership only on complete neglect of the garden, in which case he could make no claim whatever to compensation for labour performed. Deprivation of the right of ownership did not, however, usually occur; rather, to prevent neglect, the condition of the pepper garden was regularly recorded, the plantation valued, and, if deterioration of the crop through the planter’s fault appeared, there was demanded of him — besides the customary one-tenth — the difference between two successive valuations.
The government tariff
In connection with all manner of disputes arising, among others between peutoeha pangkaj and peutoeha parang, a fixed tariff varying only slightly between the several districts was in later times introduced by the administration, according to which the aneu’ seuneubô had to render one guilder per picol as wathé pangkaj and fifty cents per picol as wathé peutoeha (or wathé parang), without prejudice to the further amount of one guilder per picol due as wathé oeléëbalang to the self-governing ruler on the export of the produce.
If the oeléëbalang was himself pangkaj-giver on the footing set out above, he therefore made two guilders per picol — the reason, De Boer remarked, why the Croesuses among the self-governing rulers were so strongly in favour of pepper cultivation.
Risks of the money-lender
Against the advantages of the money-lender stood the risk of bad pepper prices and that of failure of the planting, in which case he had to renew the advances. With this in view the pangkaj-giver often stipulated that the aneu’ seuneubô should plant an intercrop alongside the pepper, or ficus elastica or hevea along the edge of the pepper garden, half the yield of which had then to be ceded to the supplier of capital — meudoewa laba, the dividing of the profit in two.
II. The free planter
Alternatively the pepper planter reported at once in person and quite independently, as a free planter, to the oeléëbalang, applying for a piece of ground together with, as pangkaj, an amount of formerly twenty dollars, now twenty guilders, per thousand vines that he undertook to plant, and in addition the bibit he required for the purpose. Sometimes he also received the tools he needed, as well as articles of clothing.
In this case the pangkaj did not have to be repaid, nor the costs of the tools and clothing supplied to him; while the entire proceeds of the first harvest fell to the planter as boh è — literally, the fruits of the manure. Thereafter the garden was divided in two (mawaih tano or mawaih plah tano). And then it was virtually the rule that the pangkaj-giver left his half of the garden in the planter’s hands with the stipulation of mawaih asoë.
Under this system the planter enjoyed, after four years, the whole yield of his own half of the garden unencumbered, together with — if he entered into the mawaih asoë contract for the other half — half of the harvest of that other half, thus in total three-quarters of the return of the whole plantation.
And yet this form of deelbouw (share-cropping) was also the most economic for an oeléëbalang who disposed of a sufficiently extensive terrain: for with these freer prospects he attracted far more immigrant pepper planters than otherwise, and so obtained that many more fourth parts of the total production, for which he had to lay out only once twenty guilders per thousand vines planted; and he enjoyed besides that much more wathé (export duty) and, finally, that many more percentages of the income tax.
The Sawang variant
In the Sawangsche toenong — the uplands of Sawang on the North Coast of Atjeh — besides the pangkaj, which then need not be so large as elsewhere, a rice field was made over to the pepper planter for his subsistence in padjoh asoé, so that he need not buy rice.
Default and its consequences
If the pepper planter did not fulfil his contract he could be ousted from his rights without more ado, the pepper garden simply annexed, and the right of use of the rice field made over to him for the satisfaction of his direct and most necessary needs of life withdrawn — which was usually stipulated in the contracts. The oeléëbalang was in such a case sufficiently indemnified, since he could then give the pepper garden out in deelbouw to other planters on far more favourable terms for himself, namely against the obligation to deliver half of the total yield: meudoewa laba, or mawaih asoë, or mawaih boh (boh, Malay boeah, fruit).
Extension of the garden
So long as free ground was available on the borders of the pepper garden, the pepper planter could take it into use for the extension of his garden; he was, however, obliged to proceed to its clearance within a certain term fixed by the oeléëbalang, as soon as other applicants for the adjoining ground presented themselves.
Significance
The pepper contract shows the Atjehnese law of land at its most explicitly commercial: a credit relation secured on a planted garden, with a perpetual rent-charge (wathé pangkaj) surviving the discharge of the debt, a right of pre-emption over the crop, a valuation regime against dilapidation, and an export duty layered on top for the territorial ruler.
See Also
- Aneu’ seuneubô
- Peutoeha pangkaj
- Peutoeha parang
- Wathé pangkaj
- Pangkaj
- Mawaih
- Meudoewa laba
- Boh è
- Sawang
- Idi
- De Pepercultuur in de Buitenbezittingen
- Pepercultuur
Source
Het recht op den grond in Atjeh, by D. W. N. de Boer, dated Scheveningen, November 1931, pp. 59-80. Offprint DLP-141, Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, ‘s-Gravenhage; Bibliotheek KITLV accession 0060 4460 60 081470 428.