Pacht

The institution of the pacht or pacht-stelsel (revenue farm, pl. pachten) was a system of tax farming in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and Dutch Cape Colony (now South Africa), whereby the colonial state sub-contracted the sovereign right of tax collection to private revenue farmers or pachters.[1][2][3][4][5] In the Indies, it formed one of the main sources of state revenue prior to the twentieth century.[4]

The pachters could extract profits on top of what was due to the authorities, and were allowed to enforce their rights with private armies and intelligence agencies.[2][4] The pachters usually employed administrators, the kuasa pacht, to run the day-to-day operations of their pachten.[3] A pacht territory could be managed as a discrete unit or divided further into smaller farms, sub-contracted to sub-farmers.[3]

The Dutch colonial authorities granted or auctioned off pachten for the sale of opium and salt, for the running of toll houses, pawnshops and gambling dens, for the collection of land, market and poll taxes, for the management of forests, and for the gathering of produce such as birds' nests, pearls, trepang and sponges.[4] As the colonial state became more centralised, most of these revenue farms were gradually taken over by the government or state monopolies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.[2][4]