BOSCH, JOHANNES VAN DEN

(1780–1844)

   Officer and statesman. Van den Bosch took his leave from the army in the Netherlands East Indies in 1808 (then occupied by the British) and, after his return, became an advisor on colonial military affairs. In 1818, he was one of the driving forces behind the Maatschappij van Weldadigheid, a government-supported society founded to fight the problems of poverty, beggary, and vagrancy by hard labor in landed establishments (“colonies”) in the province of Drenthe. As governorgeneral of the East Indies, Van den Bosch became an ardent adherent of the cultuurstelsel, a system of taxation that compelled the population (especially of the island of Java) to pay in kind by cultivating 20 percent of their soil for the benefit of the government. Van den Bosch served King William Ias a minister of colonies from 1834 to 1839 and was rewarded by being made a count.