Pangkaj (also pangkal; the blandja or advance payment) was the Atjèhnese system of advance payment to planters, gatherers of forest products, and traders. The advance typically included 2 goentja (= 4 pikoel) of padi as food, plus clothing, tools, and money (formerly ƒ20–25 per 1,000 pepper vines) per pepper garden. The right to act as pangkaj-gever (advance-provider) was formerly a monopoly of the landschapshoofden.
The advance system
The pangkaj system involved several roles:
- Peutoeha pangkaj — the advance-giver (credit provider), who provides pangkaj to planters, usually through an intermediary (peutoeha djaga). Receives wase pangkaj per pikul of pepper from gardens he financed, with right of first refusal on the product.
- Peutoeha djaga — the intermediary who collects and sells the product from all gardens under his supervision on behalf of the peutoeha pangkaj; receives a fixed wase peutoeha per pikul of pepper as remuneration.
- Aneu’ seuneubö’ — “Planter” (literally “children of the plantation”), the recipient of pangkaj; receives 2 goentja (4 pikoel) padi as food plus clothing and tools. In practice reduced to a tool of the credit-giver.
Tools included
The tools forming part of the advance (pangkaj) given to planters were: toeköj (working axe), sangkw (sickle), parang tjandöng (a kind of cane-knife), and lham (a kind of hoe).
The wasé pangkaj
The peutoeha pangkaj received wasé pangkaj — a share per pikul of pepper from gardens he financed. This wasé pangkaj was abolished in 1915 by governor Swart’s Bt. 13 September 1915 N°. 435, when private-law relationships were left to the parties.
Related forms
Related forms of advance included:
- Reunggét keu lada — an advance (pangkaj) on a standing crop under obligation to deliver a fixed quantity of produce calculated below market value
- Lada boengöng — “pepper-blossom” contracts, advances on the expected pepper harvest while plants are still in bloom; considered invalid under Islamic law
Account from Het recht op den grond in Atjeh (D. W. N. de Boer, 1931) — the two forms of the planter’s contract
D. W. N. de Boer, writing from long service as chairman of Atjehnese moesapat and landschapsgerecht courts, singled out the contract of the Atjehnese pepper planter for special treatment among the forms of deelbouw (share-cropping). He described the problem it solved: the Atjehnese who possessed no capital of his own, nor any source of livelihood yielding enough to meet the costs of clearing waste ground and laying out a garden — and on which he would have to live until the pepper could be harvested — could nevertheless acquire a pepper garden in one of two ways. De Boer referred the reader 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.
I. Engagement under a capitalist contractor
The aspirant planter reported either directly to a peutoeha pangkaj (capitalist contractor) or to one of his overseers — the peutoeha djaga or peutoeha parang — and had himself enrolled, orally, as aneu’ seuneubô. De Boer glossed the term: aneu’ (Malay anak, child) and seuneubô (pepper garden), formed on the analogy of anak negeri, “children of the land,” and anak kampong, the inhabitants of the village; the compound therefore signified the resident settlers of a pepper plantation.
Through the peutoeha djaga he received an advance normally consisting of two goentja of padi, some articles of clothing, the necessary tools and some cash, totalling no more than twenty to twenty-five dollars (or as many guilders) per thousand pepper vines he undertook to plant. It was customary not to give the advances all at once but in step with the progress of the work. Repayment was usually made in instalments, the first falling due after the first normal harvest — that is in the third or fourth year — though it also occurred, among other places in Idi, that the whole advance was called in at one stroke as soon as the planter could be reckoned able to meet it, in the fifth or sixth year.
Irrespective of the manner and pace of repayment, and even after it had been completed “to the last cent,” the planter owed the pangkaj-giver, so long as the garden remained productive, a fixed portion of the annual yield: the wathé pangkaj (Malay hasil pangkal), that is interest on the capital. This usually amounted, the overseer’s honorarium included, to one-tenth of the harvest, payable in cash or in kind — generally in kind, since the peutoeha pangkaj also held a right of pre-emption over the produce of gardens laid out with his capital, waived only if the planter received a higher bid elsewhere.
The planter was nevertheless the owner of the planting, and lost that ownership only through complete neglect of the garden, in which case he could claim nothing for the labour he had performed. In practice deprivation was rare; instead the garden was regularly inspected and valued, and where deterioration through the planter’s fault appeared, the difference between two successive valuations was demanded of him in addition to the customary tenth.
The government tariff
In consequence of disputes arising — among others between peutoeha pangkaj and peutoeha parang — a fixed tariff, varying only slightly between districts, was in later times introduced by the administration: one guilder per picol as wathé pangkaj, fifty cents per picol as wathé peutoeha (or wathé parang), and a further one guilder per picol as wathé oeléëbalang, due to the self-governing ruler on export of the produce. Where the oeléëbalang was himself the pangkaj-giver he therefore took 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.
Against the money-lender’s advantages stood the risk of poor pepper prices and 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 planter grow an intercrop alongside the pepper, or ficus elastica or hevea along the garden’s edge, half the yield of which was then ceded to him under meudoewa laba — “the dividing of the profit in two.”
II. The free planter
Alternatively the planter applied at once in person and quite independently, as a free planter, to the oeléëbalang, for a piece of ground together with a pangkaj of formerly twenty dollars, now twenty guilders, per thousand vines, and the bibit (seed) he required; sometimes also tools and clothing. In this case neither the pangkaj nor the cost of the tools and clothing had to be repaid, and 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 it was virtually the rule that the pangkaj-giver left his half in the planter’s hands on mawaih asoë terms. Under this system the planter enjoyed, after four years, the whole yield of his own half unencumbered together with half the harvest of the other half — in total three-quarters of the return of the whole plantation.
This form was nevertheless the most economic for an oeléëbalang with sufficient land: with these freer prospects he attracted far more immigrant planters, and so obtained that many more quarter-shares of total production, for a single outlay of twenty guilders per thousand vines, besides that much more wathé on export and that many more percentages of the income tax.
The Sawang variant, and default
In the Sawangsche toenong — the uplands of Sawang on the North Coast of Atjeh — besides the pangkaj, which there need not be so large, a rice field was made over to the planter for his subsistence in padjoh asoé, so that he need not buy rice. If the planter failed to fulfil his contract he could be ousted without more ado, the garden annexed and the use of that rice field withdrawn — a term usually stipulated in the contracts. The oeléëbalang was then amply indemnified, since he could re-let the garden on far better terms, namely against delivery of half the total yield (meudoewa laba, mawaih asoë, or mawaih boh). So long as free ground remained on the garden’s borders the planter might take it into use for extension, but was obliged to clear it within a term fixed by the oeléëbalang as soon as other applicants for the adjoining ground appeared.
See Also
- Wasé oelèëbalang
- Governor Swart
- Oelèëbalang
- Landschapskassen
- Contract of the Atjehnese pepper planter
- Aneu’ seuneubô
- Peutoeha pangkaj
- Peutoeha parang
- Wathé pangkaj
- Boh è
- Meudoewa laba
- Mawaih
- Het recht op den grond in Atjeh (De Boer)
Source
Atjèh. Algemeen samenvattend overzicht van land en volk van Atjèh en onderhoorigheden, door J. Kreemer, Archivaris van het Atjèh Instituut. Tweede Deel. Leiden: N.V. Boekhandel en Drukkerij voorheen E.J. Brill, 1923.
Identifier: Delpher MMKB02B:000001798; PPN 395084288. Koninklijke Bibliotheek.
Het recht op den grond in Atjeh (“The Right to the Soil 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.