The opium and gambling farms in Atjeh — the farming-out (verpachting) of the exclusive right of retail sale of opium, of the levy upon opium imports, and of the gambling houses (dobbelspelen) in the subdued parts of Groot-Atjeh — were the first regular fiscal instruments of the Dutch administration from 1876, and the chief pillar of the province’s early revenue: in 1878 they yielded f 549,000 in Groot-Atjeh alone, f 358,680 more than in the preceding year.
Institution, 1876
By ordinance of 16 June 1876 (Ind. Stbl. No. 151) the necessary stipulations were issued to begin in August 1876 with the farming-out of the exclusive right to the retail sale of opium and to the levying of duty upon the import of opium in the territory of Groot-Atjeh subjected — or further to be subjected — to the Dutch authority. The opium use in this part of the territory was estimated in May 1876 at 300 bollen (balls) per month. The number of free Chinese in Groot-Atjeh amounted then to 1,000, of whom 700 used opium. The first farm-sum was estimated at f 5,000 per month; the farm was allotted on 15 July 1876 to a Chinese of Batavia, who at the same time took the farm of the gambling houses in Atjeh for f 8,500 per month.
Growth
The continuing immigration of the Chinese — 4,886 arrivals from Singapore and Penang in 1877 alone — exercised “a not inconsiderable influence on the country’s revenues”: the farming out of the opium sale and the gambling houses yielded in 1878 in Groot-Atjeh f 549,000, “f 358,680 more than in 1877”. In the same year the native population of the subdued territories began for the first time to pay indirect taxes (see Taxation in Atjeh). The stamped of the “pacht der kleine middelen” (“farm of the small means”) — the fisc’s general farm of petty exactions — later served Langhout as an index of the growth of the Foreign Oriental population: its high yield, with 2,700 Chinese and other Foreign Orientals assessed for the trade tax in 1882, proved the steady increase of that population; in the consumer crisis of 1907 “de kleinhandel en de speel- en drankpachten” (“the retail trade and the gambling- and drink-farms”) felt the backlash of the departing foreigners.
Significance
For Langhout the farms belonged to the self-evident fiscal machinery of the first occupied years, financing in part the works of the pacification; their receipts, and later those of the in- and export-duties of the scheepvaartregeling and the assessed taxes, furnished the figures by which he demonstrates the province’s rising yield (in-/export duties: nearly f 180,000 in 1908; more than half a million in 1915; nearly f 612,000 in 1917).
See Also
Source
Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), pp. 34–35, 39, 50, 92, 111.