At the peak of its power, the territory of Mataram was divided into three: the core areas surrounding the capital called nagaraagung ^[1] , the neighbouring areas of nagaraagung stretching into the central and eastern parts of Java called mancanagara and the territories in the northern coastal areas called pasisir (Moertono,1974:101). In the 17th and 18th century, the pasisir was gradually incorporated into direct Dutch rule while, following the British interregnum and after the Java War, the mancanagara was annexed by the Dutch Colonial government (Selosoemardjan,1962:27). Therefore, after 1830, Mataram incorporated parts of its previous nagaraagung, the Yogyakarta and Surakarta regions, under its sovereignty. This state of affairs continued until the retreat of the Dutch from Java in 1942. Throughout this period, the shrunken nagaraagung remained enclaves ruled by two partitioned kingdoms of Mataram under the supervision of the Dutch Residents.

Land in the nagaraagung, which was also called Vorstenlanden in Dutch, was liable to appanage (lungguh). Appanage referred to 'an assigned region where one has the right to gain from the land and the inhabitants a profit ... but which gives no rights on the land itself.' ^[2] The right to grant appanage was reserved for the ruler who was thought to have the sole proprietary right to the produce of the soil (Raffles,1965:137). Those entitled to receive appanage were royal families, court officials and favourites of the ruler. ^[3]

The appanage holders (patih or patuh) living in the city employed intermediaries (bekel) to manage their appanage (kebekelan). The main roles of the bekel who was selected from among the residents in a certain kebekelan were to extract products and labour from villagers and to transfer these to the patih. Apart from these, the bekel was also in charge of 'guarding order and tranquillity' (njaga tata tenterem) in his kebekelan. In so far as he could fulfil these duties, the bekel was given the freedom to manage his kebekelan, a privilege which allowed him to be called 'a small ruler' (raja kecil) (Suhartono,1991:55). ^[4] He could expel peasants from his kebekelan (Selosoemardjan,1962:218) and could allocate sawah from one villager to another (Raffles,1965:145). This position gave the bekel room to use his power for his own benefit rather than for the patih's. Mobilising the manpower of his subordinates, the bekel, for example, could convert uninhabited areas into sawah. As the individually developed land was akin to private property and was not liable to tax, this provided the bekel with a chance to accumulate wealth without being noticed by the patih (Carey,1981:xxxviii-xxxix).

Living in the kebekelan under the control of the bekel were peasant villagers. In terms of their access to land, they were classified into four: those who were given a right to cultivate sawah and access to a yard (pekarangan) to erect a house (kuli kenceng or kuli sikep); those who were given a yard but were on the waiting list for the allotment of sawah (kuli kendo or kuli setengah kenceng); those who had a house in someone's pekarangan (tumpang); and those who were not entitled to sawah nor a house, and boarded with another family (tumpang tlosor) (Moertono,1974:138). This stratification system was not a closed one where change of one's status from one to the kuli kenceng was blocked, but an open one where those who were ready to bear duties imposed on the kuli kenceng could be promoted as the kuli kenceng. The degree of openness in this system might be dependent on the size of available land and the population in each area. However, given that population density in the first half of the19th century was far lower than in the early 20th century ^[5] , the kuli kenceng had to satisfy various duties which were not imposed on villagers of the other categories ^[6] and the bekel could acquire more labour force as the number of the kuli kenceng increased, it is likely that the promotion to the kuli kenceng might have not been difficult, if someone was determined to bear the duties of the kuli kenceng. ^[7]

Although the position of the bekel was not based on heredity but on a contract between the patih and the bekel ^[8] and everyone was in principle eligible for the bekel-ship, the chance for ordinary villagers to be installed as the bekel was not high. They could not easily obtain one of the keys to be promoted as the bekel, namely, wealth to make an advance payment (Moertono,1973:132). Unlike the patih who did not maintain a close watch over the bekel, the bekel was in a position to scrutinise every villager in his kebekelan. Unless someone had a special relation with the bekel, the latter would never allow the former to gain as much wealth as he had (Selosoemardjan,1962:221). The difficulty for ordinary villagers to be promoted to the bekel implies that the rural populace was differentiated into two groups in the first half of the 19th century: the ruling class of the bekel, and their subordinates; peasant villagers. Although not based on a hereditary principle, this system encouraged the formation of a rigid boundary between the bekel and other villagers by giving the former room to use his power for his own benefits.

The second half of the 19th century saw a gradual erosion of the bekel's previous position as a 'raja kecil' and his transformation into a simple functionary to extract labour and tax from villagers. This change was brought about by factors both within and outside the appanage system. One of the challenges that the bekel faced from within was the segmentation of the kebekelan. The patih, who wanted to obtain extra revenues, adopted a strategy of increasing the number of bekel by dividing the appanage. The new bekel-ships thus created were put up for auction and given to the highest bidders. ^[9] The numbers of the kebekelan increased to such an extent that in 1883, there were bekel who had five households under their jurisdiction in Yogyakarta, while it was reported in Surakarta that one bekel supervised only a single household (Mulherin,1970-71:24). ^[10] The decreasing number of households under his control and the severe competition for bekel-ship meant that the bekel had less room to accumulate wealth and used more to retain his position (Takashi,1990:14).

The second factor contributing to the changes in the position of the bekel and to the socio-economic structure of rural villages in general was the massive influx of foreigners into the Principalities, who acquired leases from the patih. The system of leasing the appanage to foreigners began in the18th century by the patih who faced a shortage of money (Raffles,1965:273). When land and products at the disposal of foreign plantation owners expanded in the late 18th and in the early 19th century, the Dutch government, seeing its monopoly of coffee being threatened, restricted land leases in the government territories in 1808 and prohibited them in 1818 (Klaberen,1953:98). As the Principalities were excluded from this law, the Yogyakarta and Surakarta regions became the most attractive places for foreign planters, resulting in a dramatic increase in the areas of land leased to them. ^[11] In 1839, the area rented to foreign planters was 5210 bau (1 bau = 7096 m²) (Houben,1994:267), while this increased to 45,616 bau in 1862 (ibid.) and 93,000 bau in 1890 (Takashi,1990:11).

When renting sawah from the patih, foreign planters did not have any intention of transforming the basic logic of the appanage system, namely, 'the land belonged to the ruler, the rights to the land belonged to the patih, the power over the land belonged to the bekel and the peasant simply belonged to the land' (O'Malley,1977:168). Instead, they adapted themselves to this system by positioning themselves between the patih and the bekel. They carried out the same duties as the bekel had borne for the patih and received the same rights that the patih had over the bekel, namely, the rights to use the land and to acquire free labour from the peasants. ^[12] As the area of the land they rented increased and their interest shifted gradually from indigo to sugar cultivation in the latter half of the 19th century, however, their presence became a major force in transforming the socio-economic structure of Yogyanese villages and the position of the bekel.

Under foreign sugarcane planters, the sawah was physically divided into two parts: one was called red (abang) and the other, blue (biru). This system, called glebagan, was instituted in accordance with the condition of land leases: the planter used half of the sawah for market crops while the peasants used the other half for food crops. The divided sawah was rotated each year, so that rice and sugarcane were alternately planted in a certain plot of the sawah. The glebagan system, however, could not be run as it was expected. First of all, it took more than a year for the sugarcane to be harvested, making it impossible for the planters to return the sawah to the peasants in a fixed time of the year. The result of this was that the actual period in which the peasants could cultivate the sawah for their own food crops was far less than a year, as Figure A-1 shows:

Source: Modified from Anderson (1972:131).

Figure A-1 shows that the peasants could use the sawah only for half a year (see column for rice and restoration of sawah) within a period of two years. Excluding one and a half months to restore the sawah for rice cultivation, the actual period for cultivating food crops was around four and half months, which was shorter than the time needed to grow rice. For fear of being late and being punished by having their unripe crops removed by the planters, the peasants were frequently forced to resort to quick-ripening crops, which were of less value than rice or other principal food products (Selosoemardjan,1962:280).

The shortened period of using sawah was not the only hardship which the planters brought to the Yogyanese peasants. Different topological requirements and working processes in cultivating sugarcane escalated the amount of corvée labour that they should bear. It took around four to five months in a period of two years to convert the sawah which was used for sugarcane cultivation into the sawah for food crops and vice versa (see columns for land preparation and restoration of sawah in Figure A-1). ^[13] Harvest of sugarcane required more labour than that of food crops since each stalk of sugarcane had to be cut individually, tied and then delivered to the sugar factory. Selosoemardjan estimates that the peasants spent approximately 150 days on corvée labour and an additional five nights a week for night duties (1962:274-75), which was more than twice the amount of corvée labour estimated by Suhartono before the coming of the planters (1991:41-2)

The shortened period of using sawah and the increase in corvée labour shifted the value of holding the sawah. The sawah allocated to each peasant was called sanggan, literally 'a burden', a term unknown outside the Principalities (Selosoemardjan,1962:218). Some kuli kenceng opted to move into other areas where no sugar estates operated or even outside the Principalities (Soedjito,1957:11). Others chose to be daily labourers, discarding their status as kuli kenceng (van Mook,1958:315). However, not all of them could do so. The majority continued to hold their sawah because, except for working in the sawah, there were only a few ways of earning a living (Selosoemardjan,1962:218). Amongst the peasants who stayed in the village, a certain strategy had been developed to cope with the increasing labour demands: namely, to share the burden. This might be done in two ways. First, they could modify the traditional custom by requiring not only kuli kenceng but every villager liable for corvée labour. Second, they could allocate sawah to more villagers, which would increase the number of kuli kenceng eligible for corvée labour. The option which was chosen by the peasants in the Principalities was the second one, so an increase in the allocation of sawah to the landless was reported in the late 19th and in the early 20th century (Suhartono,1991:104).

The coming of the foreign planters weakened the position of the bekel in several ways. First, increasing labour demands from sugar plantation made it more difficult for the bekel to fulfil his duty as a supplier of corvée labour. When the bekel could not meet his duty, he had to face severe penalties. He was locked up in the jail (Selosoemadjan,1962:272-77) or was dismissed by the planters (Takashi,1990:17). On the other hand, increasing labour demands from the sugar plantation deprived him of opportunities to mobilise villagers for his own benefits, impairing his ability to accumulate wealth. Second, with the foreign planter came a new superior to the bekel called the mandor, an overseer of the supply of land and labour employed by the sugar plantation. In administrative terms, the mandor was not a superior of the bekel. However, his role and his easy access to the foreign planter gave him a power to treat the bekel arbitrarily. If a bekel had had the misfortune of displeasing his mandor, the latter could make a report to the foreign planter, which meant a severe penalty for him (Mulherin,1970-71:23-4). Third, in the process of being used as a medium to secure stable supply of labour and land for the foreign planter, the bekel could not use his traditional source of legitimacy: people's homage to the ruler. Instead, what he could use was physical force supported by the police. This allowed the relation of exploitation to be expressed more clearly, weakening the traditional authority of the bekel.

In brief, the changes in the second half of the 19th century made the position of the bekel less advantageous than before. His riches were siphoned off to renew his position as a bekel, his opportunities to accumulate wealth declined as the kebekelan were segmented and the peasants were mobilised for sugarcane cultivation, the traditional authority provided by his relation with the ruler was eroded and increasing labour demands from the sugar plantation made it difficult for him to fulfil his duty. With these changes, the independent power of the bekel was gradually impaired. He was no longer a raja kecil in his kebekelan but was identified more as a functionary employed by the planter. The deteriorating position of the bekel, however, did not mean an improvement of the peasants' position. They had to work longer for the foreign planter and could use their sawah for only a short period of time. In these circumstances, one of the ways adopted by the bekel and kuli kenceng to lessen their economic hardship was to share the burden by apportioning sawah to more villagers, thus increasing the number of people eligible for corvée labour.