Van de Graaff was a member of the Council of the Indies (Raad van Indië) at Batavia whose advice led to the substantial reduction in the export price of Government salt from Java, intended to enable the Java-salt to compete with Siamese, Makassarese and Bimanese salt in the markets of the Buitenbezittingen. He is mentioned once in P. H. van der Kemp (1900), in a footnote to Fullerton’s minute on Acheh.
The salt-price reduction
The footnote, attached to Fullerton’s discussion of the Dutch attempt to restrain the merchants of Sumatra’s East Coast from buying salt at Singapore, reads:
“(a) De aanzienlijke verlaging van den prijs voor het Gouvernementszout op Java, bestemd ten uitvoer, had vooral plaats op advies van het bekende lid van de raad van Indië Van de Graaff, en beoogde inderdaad dat het Java-zout de Buitenbezittingen niet langer zou worden verdrongen door op Siaraeesch Makassaarsch en Bimaneesch zout. Zie mijn Zoutwerk, bl. 153-154.”
In other words: the considerable reduction in the price of Government salt from Java, destined for export, took place principally on the advice of the well-known member of the Council of the Indies, Van de Graaff, and aimed in fact at ensuring that Java-salt would no longer be displaced in the Buitenbezittingen (Outer Possessions) by Siamese, Makassarese and Bimanese salt. Van der Kemp refers the reader to his Zoutwerk (salt monograph), pp. 153–154, for further detail.
The strategic background
Fullerton, writing from Penang in 1828, had warned that the Netherlands Government at Padang on Sumatra’s West Coast was complaining that salt imported from Singapore into the ports of the East Coast — and finding its way into the interior of Sumatra — was affecting the sale of the Java-salt that the Dutch imported into Padang for a similar purpose. Should the Dutch succeed in restraining the merchants on the East Coast of Sumatra from buying salt at Singapore, “considerable inconvenience and reduction will arise in our trade with Siam, from whence it is solely imported.” Fullerton’s minute shows that the salt-trade of the Straits was already a serious Anglo-Dutch commercial rivalry in the late 1820s, before the full development of the Dutch cultivation system.
Van de Graaff’s advice, given at some point in the 1820s or early 1830s, must be read against this background. The Council of the Indies at Batavia was attempting, by price competition, to win back for Java-salt the markets it had lost to the cheaper Siamese salt that came through Singapore, as well as to the salt produced at Macassar and Bima in the archipelago itself. The policy is the forerunner of the more systematic Dutch salt-monopoly that would later be imposed on the Outer Possessions.
Significance
Van der Kemp’s reference to Van de Graaff is one of his characteristic shorthand allusions to a wider literature: the reader is expected to know — or to look up — the Zoutwerk for the full treatment. The mention serves to underline, in 1900, that the British concern expressed by Fullerton in 1828 about Dutch commercial rivalry in Sumatra had been answered by a deliberate Dutch price-policy, and that the policy itself had originated in the advice of a named and “well-known” member of the Council of the Indies. Van de Graaff is therefore a small but concrete figure in the economic background of the post-1824 Anglo-Dutch rivalry that is one of Van der Kemp’s principal themes.
See Also
- Robert Fullerton
- Fullerton’s minute on Acheh (21 March 1825)
- Dutch Salt Price Reduction
- Java
- Batavia
- Sumatra’s East Coast
- Sumatra’s West Coast
- Padang
- Singapore
- Siam
- Celebes
- Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London (1824)
Source
Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819, by P. H. van der Kemp, in Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, 6e Volgr., Deel VII (1900), pp. 159–239. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit, LS.08781.
Van de Graaff was a member of the Council of the Indies (Raad van Indië) at Batavia whose advice led to the substantial reduction in the export price of Government salt from Java, intended to enable the Java-salt to compete with Siamese, Makassarese and Bimanese salt in the markets of the Buitenbezittingen. He is mentioned once in P. H. van der Kemp (1900), in a footnote to Fullerton’s minute on Acheh.
The salt-price reduction
The footnote, attached to Fullerton’s discussion of the Dutch attempt to restrain the merchants of Sumatra’s East Coast from buying salt at Singapore, reads:
“(a) De aanzienlijke verlaging van den prijs voor het Gouvernementszout op Java, bestemd ten uitvoer, had vooral plaats op advies van het bekende lid van de raad van Indië Van de Graaff, en beoogde inderdaad dat het Java-zout de Buitenbezittingen niet langer zou worden verdrongen door op Siaraeesch Makassaarsch en Bimaneesch zout. Zie mijn Zoutwerk, bl. 153-154.”
In other words: the considerable reduction in the price of Government salt from Java, destined for export, took place principally on the advice of the well-known member of the Council of the Indies, Van de Graaff, and aimed in fact at ensuring that Java-salt would no longer be displaced in the Buitenbezittingen (Outer Possessions) by Siamese, Makassarese and Bimanese salt. Van der Kemp refers the reader to his Zoutwerk (salt monograph), pp. 153–154, for further detail.
The strategic background
Fullerton, writing from Penang in 1828, had warned that the Netherlands Government at Padang on Sumatra’s West Coast was complaining that salt imported from Singapore into the ports of the East Coast — and finding its way into the interior of Sumatra — was affecting the sale of the Java-salt that the Dutch imported into Padang for a similar purpose. Should the Dutch succeed in restraining the merchants on the East Coast of Sumatra from buying salt at Singapore, “considerable inconvenience and reduction will arise in our trade with Siam, from whence it is solely imported.” Fullerton’s minute shows that the salt-trade of the Straits was already a serious Anglo-Dutch commercial rivalry in the late 1820s, before the full development of the Dutch cultivation system.
Van de Graaff’s advice, given at some point in the 1820s or early 1830s, must be read against this background. The Council of the Indies at Batavia was attempting, by price competition, to win back for Java-salt the markets it had lost to the cheaper Siamese salt that came through Singapore, as well as to the salt produced at Macassar and Bima in the archipelago itself. The policy is the forerunner of the more systematic Dutch salt-monopoly that would later be imposed on the Outer Possessions.
Significance
Van der Kemp’s reference to Van de Graaff is one of his characteristic shorthand allusions to a wider literature: the reader is expected to know — or to look up — the Zoutwerk for the full treatment. The mention serves to underline, in 1900, that the British concern expressed by Fullerton in 1828 about Dutch commercial rivalry in Sumatra had been answered by a deliberate Dutch price-policy, and that the policy itself had originated in the advice of a named and “well-known” member of the Council of the Indies. Van de Graaff is therefore a small but concrete figure in the economic background of the post-1824 Anglo-Dutch rivalry that is one of Van der Kemp’s principal themes.
See Also
- Robert Fullerton
- Fullerton’s minute on Acheh (21 March 1825)
- Dutch Salt Price Reduction
- Java
- Batavia
- Sumatra’s East Coast
- Sumatra’s West Coast
- Padang
- Singapore
- Siam
- Celebes
- Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London (1824)
Source
Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819, by P. H. van der Kemp, in Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, 6e Volgr., Deel VII (1900), pp. 159–239. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit, LS.08781.