He sharply criticized VOC rule on Java for its "feudal" exactions from the population. He proposed extensive changes to the structure of government and finance on Java, including property rights for the Javanese, transforming the 'bupati' into a salaried bureaucracy, and reforming the taxation system, many of which foreshadowed the ideas of Herman Willem Daendels and Stamford Raffles. When in 1795 the regime of the stadtholder in the Batavian Revolution was overthrown, and the Dutch Republic replaced by the Batavian Republic, which made an end to the VOC, which went bankrupt in 1796, and would be nationalized in 1799, the East Indies were placed under a Commission for East-Indies Affairs in the new regime. Hogendorp wrote a Memorandum for them in which he made a number of recommendations for reforms. The new regime sent out a "Commission-General", with Sebastiaan Cornelis Nederburgh and Simon Hendrik Frijkenius as members. Hogendorp had high expectations of them, but he was soon disappointed. Nederburgh took the side of Governor-General Willem Arnold Alting and helped this corrupt official to keep things as they were. They conspired to appoint Johannes Siberg, the son-in-law of Alting, as third Commissioner-General, effectively neutralizing Frijkenius who did not want to join the clique, and took control of the Dutch East Indies. These people took a dim view of Hogendorp and his new ideas. In 1798 they had him arrested for these views and held incommunicado for five months. But in 1799 he escaped on a Danish ship to the Batavian Republic.Van der Aa, pp. 934-935Blok and Molhuysen, p. 610
