Resources and Violence
The growing numbers of people who could claim from the peasants rights to portions of their production, not to mention a variety of unpaid services from roadwork to fodder collection, was matched by galloping population growth—according to one source Madura's population doubled four times between 1799 and 1895 (Touwen-Bouwsma 1977) despite massive migration to Java.
Even allowing for differences in census coverage over this period, whatever increase there was further intensified pressures on resources. Madura was never to become self-sufficient in foodstuffs or even firewood.No serious efforts were made until the early twentieth century to inquire into the welfare of the common Madurese. As long as soldiers and contingencies were forthcoming on demand, the colonial authorities saw no need to meddle in the affairs of the three regencies; on the contrary, the regents could count on their help to put down any eventual rebellion. The island became more and more isolated from the social and economic forces affecting Java. The tendency to rely on individual justice or self-help—already encouraged by the spatial separation of individual family units or household clusters (taneyan) in the middle of their fields, in contrast to the Javanese pattern of concentrated village groupings—could only develop further with mistrust of officials and outsiders. While one of the most diversified tax-collection and labor-service structures in the Netherlands East Indies functioned in Madura, reports increasingly spoke of unexplained murder. Madura's rudimentary judicial system was ill prepared to cope with the violence, even after a law was passed in 1864 to confiscate publicly displayed weapons. The murder rate for Sumenep was estimated in 1871 at 42.7 per 100,000 people, but an estimate for the entire island in 1860 arrives at a figure of 222 (calculations based on Jonge 1993:9). Historical sources are vague as to the motives for these killings, but one can assume that they were often triggered by disputes over valued resources. It would not seem far-fetched to suggest that the combination of squeezing the Madurese economically while tolerating if not encouraging their ferocity in battle could go some way towards ingraining the behavioral patterns for which they were to become notorious.