The peutoeha pangkaj was the capitalist contractor of the Atjehnese pepper economy — the pangkaj-giver who financed the laying out of a pepper garden and drew a perpetual share of its produce.
Function
Under the pepper planter’s contract, an aspirant planter without means engaged himself with a peutoeha pangkaj, or with one of his overseers (peutoeha djaga, peutoeha parang), as an aneu’ seuneubô, receiving from him through the overseer an advance in padi, clothing, tools and cash amounting to twenty to twenty-five dollars per thousand vines.
Rights
Even after the advance had been repaid in full, the peutoeha pangkaj remained entitled, so long as the garden was productive, to the wathé pangkaj — normally a tenth of the harvest, the overseer’s honorarium included. He had besides a right of pre-emption over the produce of gardens laid out with his capital, waived only when the planter received a higher bid elsewhere; hence payment was usually made in kind.
To guard against dilapidation he had the garden regularly inspected and valued, and could demand from a negligent planter the difference between two successive valuations. To spread his risk against bad pepper prices and failure of the planting he often stipulated that the planter grow an intercrop, or ficus elastica or hevea along the garden’s edge, half the yield of which fell to him under meudoewa laba.
The oeleebalang as pangkaj-giver
Where the oeléëbalang himself acted as pangkaj-giver on the standard footing, he took two guilders per picol — one as wathé pangkaj and one as wathé oeléëbalang on export — which explained, in D. W. N. de Boer’s phrase, why “de Croesussen onder de zelfbestuurders” were so strongly in favour of pepper cultivation.
See Also
- Contract of the Atjehnese pepper planter
- Aneu’ seuneubô
- Peutoeha parang
- Wathé pangkaj
- Meudoewa laba
- Oeleebalang
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.