bolsters, and quilts . . . but not long enough for combing or weaving." A second type called Kapas was spun by the Javanese: "As soon as the flowers are gone, there buds out a knot, containing the cotton wool, this cotton fit for weaving." The labor required to produce handspun cloth limited the production of locally woven goods. Seven hours of continuous labor were required to produce one meter of cloth on a traditional Javanese loom, and this work, as well as the spinning of yarn, was done by women.
The women of the family should provide the men with the cloths necessary for their apparel and from the first consort to the sovereign to the wife of the lowest peasant, the same rule is observed. In every cottage there is a spinning wheel and a loom, and in all ranks a man is accustomed to pride himself on [the] beauty of cloth woven by either his wife, mistress, or daughter.
For the women, only the planting and harvesting of crops took precedence over these homespun duties.
For the last four hundred years, however, cotton has not been a major commodity in Java's agricultural economy. As early as 1598, Jan H. Linschoten was persuaded that "if cloth of Holland were [in Java] to be found, it would be more esteemed than cotton linen out of India." Even under Dutch colonial rule, when a plantation system prevailed, coffee, rice, tobacco, and copra far outstripped cotton in importance. Batik makers have always relied on imported cotton, first from India and then from Holland and England. These imports were undoubtedly expanded in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, as Java's population tripled. The increased labor force, in turn, increased the production of batik.
Raffles the Remarkable
The leading witness to the development of batik was that extraordinary man, Thomas Stamford Raffles, who arrived in Java in 1811 as the English began a brief but important interregnum there. Some twelve thousand Englishmen landed in Java, capturing it from the Dutch. Raffles was appointed lieutenant governor of the island and forthwith set out to learn everything he could about his new surroundings. He abolished forced and "contingent" deliveries, upon which both the Dutch and Javanese had based their economy. Shocked that a country like Holland, which valued political liberty, would tolerate thirty thousand slaves in Java, Raffles set about eradicating slavery.
Not content with such far-reaching economic and social changes, Raffles steeped himself in the local culture. He studied the Javanese language; he uncovered the ancient monument at Borobudur, which by then was buried deep in the jungle; he encouraged restoration of other ancient temples. Raffles also wrote a monumental History of Java, which to this day stands as the most authoritative and exhaustive chronicle of the island and its folkways. He amassed one of the greatest collections of flora, fauna, textiles, and artifacts ever collected in the archipelago and packed it all up for shipment home. The boat and its contents burned fifty miles offshore. Undaunted, Raffles began a second collection, which he brought back safely to England.
Raffles may well have collected batik by the gross—he wrote that there were a hundred identifiable patterns—and his History of Java includes the first systematic study of the art. Only two of Raffles's Javanese pieces survive, and they seem to be the earliest in any collection. Illustrations in the Raffles History show numerous ways of wearing batik, along with many different patterns. He also wrote in detail about how batik is made.
During Raffles's time England began exporting its own printed cottons to Java, and local batik makers acquired a new perspective on their own work when they found the English prints were not colorfast. The English also exported a high-quality, tightly woven white cloth. This, along with European-made mori, as cambrics were called, began to replace Javanese hand-woven textiles. The smoother, mill-made textiles from Europe became the groundcloth of most nineteenth-century batik: it was possible for wax to be drawn in more detailed designs on these finer fabrics, and the motifs themselves began to change accordingly.
The subsequent hundred years witnessed a great flowering of batik, particularly on the north coast with its cosmopolitan exposure. Whereas Raffles had recognized a mere hundred designs, a century later the batik scholar G. P. Rouffaer described more than a thousand.
Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the remarkable man whose monumental History of Java is still important to our knowledge of batik.
One of the earliest (ca. 1810—1820) surviving examples of Javanese batik, this piece (right) remained in the Raffles' family until it was donated to London's Museum of Mankind in 1939, Its border was made separately and stitched to the fabric.
Birth of an Industry
In 1815, only four years after Sir Thomas Raffles and the British arrived in Java, the victorious nations at the Congress of Vienna decided that, in order to achieve world harmony, a balance of power would have to be imposed. Thus, the East Indies came to be restored to the Dutch who promptly revoked the reforms of Raffles.
The Dutch remained in the East Indies for almost another century and a half, turning much of the area—especially land-rich Java—into a vast state-owned plantation, cultivated by forced labor with product quotas. Java became a keystone of Holland's commercial empire in the Indies. Its pluralistic society, strengthened by Chinese immigration in the seventeenth century, now became stratified: Dutch on top, Chinese (and sometimes Arabs) in the middle, and the indigenous population at the bottom.
For most Javanese—excepting some Eurasians, a few nobles, some merchants and their families and friends—life was hard indeed. "No Dogs or Inlanders" was not an uncommon sign in public places. Dutch schools were closed to non-Dutch; land could be bought only by the Dutch. Although slavery was finally abolished in 1860, and a civil service was established along with some educational reforms, life for the people of Java continued grimly.
Nevertheless, profound changes were taking place beneath the surface. Between 1815 and 1860, the population of Java doubled, then doubled again by 1900. The plantation system, which had cultivated cotton, tea, and coffee, now began to grow rubber and nut palm as well. The discovery of petroleum brought vast new wealth to the Netherlands, and a flood of Dutch civil servants came to oversee the empire—thousands of administrators and clerks, many of whom would come to view Java as "home."
An 1855 lithograph entitled A Native School in the Kampung. Javanese village life is still much the same, more than a century later.
Chinese musician plays a popular instrument called the Kong-a-Hian.
All this was significant for the history of batik. The population explosion, both Javanese and Dutch, increased the availability of labor. New roads and railroads brought raw cotton and finished batik to growing markets. As the economy grew, there were more batik producers and more people who could afford to buy batik. From 1850 to 1939 the Javanese produced some of their finest work.
There were interruptions along the way, most notably the worldwide depression that began in 1929. Already threatened by cheap Japanese imports, Java's textile markets shriveled, and many men and women trudged from town to town in desperate search of employment. The economic dislocation was long and severe, resulting in the permanent loss of many local batik styles and specialties.
Then came the awful disruption of World War II as well as the culmination
