La Grande Route, as Daendels called it, was a military road which was built by the order of King Louis Bonaparte who ruled the Kingdom of Holland at that time, during the Napoleonic Wars. France was at war with England and the road was intended to support the defense 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 at that time. However, heavy tropical rainfall frequently destroyed them. Daendels faced difficult conditions in the Dutch East Indies when he started the road construction. The financial situation in the colony was so tight that the Minister of Colonial Affairs in The Hague sent him a letter emphasizing the difficult financial situation and 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 endeavors. Daendels then decided to use Javanese unpaid forced laborers 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 labor 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 Megamendung area nearby 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 Pekalongan region.
The road initially served as the backbone of Java's transportation and logistic. It connects some of the largest cities in Java, including Anyer, Cilegon, Tangerang, Batavia, Meester Cornelis, Buitenzorg, Cianjur, Bandung, Sumedang, Cirebon, Tegal, Pekalongan, Semarang, Rembang, Tuban, Surabaya, Sidoarjo, Pasuruan, Probolinggo and Panarukan.
Media depiction
In 1996, the Dutch producer Pieter van Huystee produced the film De Groote Postweg. This film was shown in several cinemas in the Netherlands, Italy and France. The Indonesian writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer did the narration for this film.
