by a Ministry of Trade and Colonies Ministerie van Koophandel en Koloniën),
abbreviated to MvK. By this time the Batavian Republic itself had become history;
it had been replaced by the Kingdom Holland, of which Napoleon's brother,
Louis, became king. The relations between the kingdom and the colonies became
the sole responsibility of the king and the new ministry had to assist him in
this duty. The ministry was split into three divisions, the first of which dealt
with the East. In 1808, the Ministry of Trade and Colonies was merged with
the Ministry of Naval Affairs to become the Ministry of the Navy and Colonies
(Ministerie van Marine en Koloniën). The latter had special divisions assigned to
the colonial administration and the trade in colonial products. Both before and
after this merger, the colonies were the responsibility of Minister Paulus van der
Heim, a man without any colonial experience. In 1810 the Kingdom Holland
was annexed to the Empire of France. The entire colonial administration was
now moved to Paris, becoming part of the Ministry of the Navy and Colonies
there. In this Ministry was a Division for Dutch Colonies (Division des Colonies
Hollandaises).7
The man destined to bring the new government of the colonies in the East into
line with the theories in the Netherlands, who set in train a reformed system
of colonial rule, was Herman Willem Daendels, appointed Governor-General
by King Louis on January 28, 1807. In Daendels' Instruction, he was given the
power to replace all members of the Council of the Indies (Raad van Indië),
the High Government. The Council itself was demoted to an advisory board
to the Governor-General. Other elements in Daendels' Instruction touched
upon the reorganization of the naval and military sectors, the improvement
of the economic situation of the indigenous commoners and of the slaves,
ending abuses and corruption, in the forms of accepting gifts and so on, and, if
necessary, moving the seat of government away from Batavia. After a difficult
voyage, Daendels arrived in Java and was sworn in on January 14, 1808. He
speedily established special regulations for the General Secretary, enlarged
the army, started the construction of the Grand Postal Road (Grote Postweg),
reformed the civil service, by taking such measures as granting every civil servant
a fixed salary and prohibiting acceptance of gifts. He abolished the fairly large
province of Java's Northeast Coast and introduced nine 'prefectures', a sort
of residency in its stead. The last measure won him the lifetime hatred of the
dismissed Governor of that province, Nicolaas Engelhard. In the remaining
colonies outside Java Daendels abolished the Political Councils. In economic
terms, the way the Javanese countryside was exploited remained much the same,
because the forced deliveries and contingents (tributes), dating from the VOC
period, were continued. However, the position of the Javanese Bupati (Regents)
underwent change, in the sense that in future they would be nominated by the
colonial government as if they were civil servants. This was only a half-hearted
reform because, unlike the European administrators, they would not be paid fixed
salaries. They had to be remunerated from the proceeds from specially assigned
sawah land and allowances derived from the collection of poll taxes, deliveries
of coffee, etcetera, to the colonial government. Finally, there was a change of
GERRIT KNAAP THE DUTCH COLONIAL ARCHIVAL LEGACY IN AN AGE OF REGIME CHANGE CI79O-Cl8l0
7 Schiff, 'De koloniale politiek', 381-384, 388-391, 403, and 412; De Graaff, Kalm temidden, 38; HaNA, MvK
(entry number 2.01.27.03:9.).
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