In this paper social economic change in the residency Besoeki (the eastern end of Java) in the Great Depression is examined. Besoeki was one of the centers of sugar- and tobacco-estates in Java in Dutch colonial era and was hit by a heavy fall of agricultural products in the world market. This made peasants' economy worse and poverty prevailed generally, but the situation was somewhat different among four regencies which constituted this residency because the staple products for the world market differed in each regency. Namely, in the regency Panaroekan sugar estates were concentrated and so people here, generally speaking, suffered the fiercest shock of the Depression. In the regency Djember, on the contrary, cultivation of tobacco was carried out much more widely than that of sugar-cane and the situation was somewhat better than in Panaroekan because of the relatively stable local tobacco market which could soften the effect of the fall in price in the world market. And the regency Bondowoso had fairly wide cultivation of both sugar cane and tobacco. As for the regency Banjoewangi the economic importance of European estates to the peasants' economy was little and it is the cultivation of coconut palm that linked it to the world market. So the influence of the worse condition of the world market appeared earliest because the price of copra already dropped at the beginning of 1930's.
During this period people's agriculture fairly developed especially in the cultivation of food crops notwithstanding the dropped market prices. The area of sawahs (rice fields) became much wider during this period because of the completion of irrigation work in Banjoewangi and Djember. And the cropping ratio rose both in sawah and dry fields, which means that the peasants responded to the worse economic situation positively by intensifying their cultivation. The influence of the Depression appeared rather as the temporary recession of commerce in agricultural products. For example, rice mills and traders bought up fewer products than before and consequently gave less credit to the peasants. In those circumstances the peasants here tried to reduce their expenditure in cash as much as possible.
But this never means that their economy went back to the phase of autarky, for various burdens should still be filled in cash. So the sale of agricultural products never ceased. The large landowners still continued to try to get profits from it, but on the other hand, the poor and the middle peasants were forced to sell their products in order to pay their taxes.
Under these circumstances it is the large landowners who could get the lion's share. Through lending money to the poor and the middle peasants they could get the control of wider fields which the latter offered as a guarantee and these transactions soon led to the sale of fields. Thus social stratification here became much wider during the Great Depression than before.