The Woekerordonnantie — the usury ordinance of the Netherlands Indies — was one of the instruments to which D. W. N. de Boer attributed the gradual decline of the Atjehnese share-cropping contract mawaih.
Role in the transformation of Atjehnese rural credit
De Boer listed among the effects of “de steeds dieper inwerkende pacificatie” the countering of usury — “den tegengang van den woeker (credietwezen naast toepassing van de Woekerordonnantie)” — that is, the combination of an organised credit system with the application of the usury ordinance. Together with the budgeting of chiefs’ incomes, the tariffing of their emoluments, the protection of the small man against the great landholders, the growth of market traffic and the emancipation of the rajat, this weakened the conditions under which large landholding and share-cropping had flourished.
Even so, the ratio of five share-croppers to every one mawaih-giver still pointed clearly, in his judgement, to an existing large landholding.
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.