Great Post Road
The Great Post Road is the name for the historical road that runs across Java and connects Anyer with Panarukan. It was built during the administration of Herman Willem Daendels, governor-general of the Dutch East Indies, using unpaid forced labour that cost thousands of lives.
Construction
La Grande Route, as Daendels called it, was a military road built by the order of King Louis Bonaparte, who ruled the Kingdom of Holland during the Napoleonic Wars. France was at war with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the road was intended to support the defence of Java by, e.g. making it easier to transfer soldiers and supplies. In 1750, before the road was constructed, connections existed between Batavia and Semarang and onwards to Surabaya. A north-south connection between Semarang, Surakarta and onwards to Yogyakarta was also available then. However, heavy tropical rainfall frequently destroyed them.When he started road construction in the Dutch East Indies, Daendels faced difficult conditions. The colony's financial situation was so tight that the minister of colonial affairs in The Hague sent him a letter emphasizing the need to reduce expenditures. The British posed a major threat. Furthermore, there were uprisings in Bantam and Cirebon, and some of Daendels' opponents actively frustrated his endeavours.
Daendels then decided to use Javanese unpaid forced labourers to perform most of the heavy work, which resulted in thousands of deaths due to the difficult health challenges of the forests and marshes as well as the labour conditions. Many of Daendels' opponents became historical sources of the harsh conditions during the road construction. Major William Thorn wrote that about 12,000 natives are said to have perished during the construction. Nicolaus Engelhard, who was a governor over most of Java and who had to give up his position to Daendels, stated that 500 workers had died in the Megamendung area near Buitenzorg, excluding the number of people who died as the result of illness. Furthermore, Engelhard criticized Daendels for the thousand casualties resulting from the road construction in the woods of Weleri in the Pekalongan region.