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‘I succeeded yesterday in getting the brother and the sister of the Sultan in the fortress as well; the mother, Ratoe Kentjana, doesn’t want to come and is desperate; we had to lock her in. Our house is full, and our household very costly. (...) I wish my wife and children were here, then I would be at ease. My pregnant wife suffers a lot. (...) We beg your Excellence, send us reinforcements quickly, otherwise we won’t be able to keep the kraton or the dalem of Pakoe Alam, and if we lose both places, then what would we do?’ These words were written on 10 August 1825 by a desperate resident of Jogjakarta, A.H. Smissaert - according to a person ‘a little, fat and shy person’ - who was suddenly caught in a very large revolt.
The Dutch colonial rule could hardly suppress the revolt - which is now known as the Java War - with the biggest effort. The years between 1825 and 1830 form a very bloody period in the history of Java and of the Dutch Indies, in which about 15,000 Dutch soldiers and 200,000 Javanese people got killed. The Java War can be seen as the end of the old social order on Java, and certainly as a failed effort to restore the traditional elite in its old powerful position, to stimulate the Javanese culture and to suppress the Dutch colonial rule on Java. The eventual result was something completely different, the definitive settlement of the colonial power on Java.
For the Dutch the period between 1825 and 1830 also meant a clear separation. The Java War was eventually won, but that didn’t make the Dutch Indies into a lucrative possession at all. The Java War was seen as the termination of the old order on Java by the Javanese, but from a Dutch point of view it was the end of the ‘new order’ which Raffles and Van der Capellen had tried to establish. Due to the efforts of Johannes van den Bosch they returned to the old forms of exploitation from the time of the VOC: the ideals of Van Hogendorp, Raffles and Van der Capellen were wiped out for the cultivation system.
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