Land and Labor in Java in The Nineteenth Century

As an agricultural country, land in Indonesia was a major source of survival for peasant. In the concept of agrarian kingdom, the land belongs to the king. Anyone who had the right to cultivate the land, had the obligation of mandatory work to support the hegemony of the kingdom. How then the colonial government used the concepts of the land tenure system to gain profit for the colonial government? This research was conducted in the context of the 19th century in Java using historical method. The sources used in this study were colonial sources, archives, and newspapers published in the nineteenth century. The findings indicated that colonial rulers utilized the concept of land which was applicable in the royal system for the exertion of labor. Land tenure was closely related to agricultural labor. Tenants or landowners were the object of labor exploitation. The wider the peasant cultivates the land, the more the workers were obliged to be mobilized. In addition, land tenure whose basis was communal land caused uncertainty in land tenure. Peasant can lose their land if they did not have the ability to carry out their obligations to carry out compulsory work that had been determined by the government. Keywords— Java, Land tenure, land and labor, 19th