Wathé oeléëbalang was the export duty of one guilder per picol payable to the self-governing ruler on the export of pepper from a landschap of Atjeh, under the fixed tariff introduced by the administration for the pepper economy.
Position in the tariff
The aneu’ seuneubô had to render one guilder per picol as wathé pangkaj and fifty cents per picol as wathé peutoeha, “onverminderd het als wathé oeléëbalang aan den zelfbestuurder nog verschuldigde bedrag van nogmaals f 1.— per picol bij den uitvoer van het product” — without prejudice to the further one guilder per picol due to the self-governing ruler on export.
Effect on the interest of the ruler
Where the oeléëbalang was himself the pangkaj-giver, he therefore took two guilders per picol. This, D. W. N. de Boer noted, was why the wealthiest among the self-governing rulers were so strongly committed to pepper cultivation. Under the free-planter system the ruler’s calculation was similar: for a single outlay of twenty guilders per thousand vines he obtained a quarter of the production of each new plantation, plus that much more wathé on export and that many more percentages of the income tax.
See Also
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.