Protecting Peasants from Capitalism: The Subordination of Javanese Traders by the Colonial State (original) (raw)

Chinese Merchants Role of Java Trade in 19th Century

Historia: Jurnal Pendidik dan Peneliti Sejarah, 2020

Chinese arrival in Java was encouraged with significant factors both internal and external. Chinese in Java eventually brought shifting in economical, social, and political aspect of Java under Dutch realm. In 19th century, Chinese in Java were differed into two clusters, known as peranakan and totok. These two terms possed different languange, culture, economical conditions. This study aimed to determine the role of Chinese merchants of Java during 19th century. The study engaged literature study which includes planning, selection, extraction, and excution. Literature review tries to review several books, scholarly articles, and other relevant sources which focused on particular area. Under Dutch realm, Chinese in Java portrayed many different roles, such as moneylenders, middlemen, kapitan, opium traders, and etec. Chinese were considered active in and around Java as the settled in Netherland Indies trade withi coastal shipping. Chinese possess priviledge spot under Dutch colonial...

The Long-term Pattern of Maritime Trade in Java from the Late Eighteenth Century to the Mid-Nineteenth Century

2013

This article investigates the trade pattern of Java from the late eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century from a long-term perspective. There is no comprehensive data on Javanese trade during the period in question, with information on local and regional trade being particularly scarce. To fill in the missing pieces and identify a broad trend, this paper attempts to examine data on both the late eighteenth century and the second quarter of the nineteenth century and put them together with the scattered data available on the first half of the nineteenth century. This paper suggests, first, that while it is known that Java’s economic relations with the outside world were heavily oriented toward trade with the Netherlands, this trend began in the late eighteenth century rather than with the introduction of the Cultivation System in 1830. Second, Java’s coastal trade also began to develop in the late eighteenth century. This trade was conducted by European traders and Asian ind...

Promises and Predicaments: Trade and Entrepreneurship in Colonial and Independent Indonesia in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Journal of Southeast Asian economies, 2016

This edited book is a tribute to Thomas Lindblad, who contributed significantly to the development of Indonesian economic history in the Netherlands over the past thirty years. More importantly, it is an excellent and quite well-structured survey of current research on Indonesian economic history with contributions from both senior and junior players in this international field of study. The introduction, authored by both editors, sets out the thematic vectors along which Indonesia's colonial and postcolonial economy can be most fruitfully studied: trade and investment, entrepreneurship, and changing political regimes. Whilst the 2002 economic history by Howard Dick, Vincent Houben, Thomas Lindblad and Thee Kian Wee (The emergence of a national economy: An economic history of Indonesia, 1800-2000) focused on the intertwinement of globalisation, state-formation, and the emergence of a national economy, this volume addresses the interplay between foreign trade, economic actors, and the political economy. In doing so, it highlights the intersections between the economic activities of different socioethnic groups, the spatial distribution of economic activity, and temporal trajectories across the colonial and postcolonial regimes. The main part of this study consists of 16 chapters that are grouped into the three above-mentioned thematic domains. Changes and continuities in trade and investment are dealt with in the first section over four chapters. Anne Booth undertakes a long-term survey and analysis of the effects of imbalances in export and import growth between Java and the rest of the archipelago on regional development within Indonesia. Hal Hill compares the sectoral shifts, inter-sectoral labour productivity, and the demographics of six Southeast Asian countries and finds that, although structural change has been rapid everywhere, the phenomenon's multidimensionality has led to marked differences between the countries studied. Pim de Zwart et al. engage in a longue durée analysis of 'openness' (the share of trade in the total economy of Indonesia) and its impact on growth and wage levels. Contrary to neoliberal thinking, the correlation between the two was not straightforward; rather, it depended to a large extent on changing institutional contexts and unequal geographic distribution. Alex Claver examines the role of money in the Dutch colonial economy and perceives a gradual adaptation to the different needs of the European trading sector and the peasant economy. The second section on entrepreneurship, focusing on the economic roles of specific groups, consists of five chapters. Leonard Blussé addresses the role of Chinese sailors on VOC ships sailing to Europe during the late nineteenth century, and discusses recruitment arrangements as well as gives evidence on the harsh conditions on board. Freek Colombijn studies contractors and subcontractors in Medan's construction sector during the 1950s. He proposes the term 'complementarisasi' to describe the economic relationship between actors belonging to different ethnic

The Invisible Economy: Javanese Commerce in the Late Colonial State

The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 1990

Javanese economic history is conventionally represented as an involutionary process in which rural Javanese, protected from the deleterious effects of ca italism by the colonial State, intensified subslstence agriculture to provide each househoPd with a meagre l i n g . This study challenges the conventional interpretation in two respects. First1 it demonstrates that before the Dutch established economic control and a p i n around I d trade and petty commodi production were significant sectors of the indigenous economy perhaps 8 r t y percent of rural income. Secondly, it argues that the inability o ! = I % traders to compete with Chinese wholesalers was not due to a lack of commercial acumen but to State policies which inhibited capital accumulation and made credit prohibitively expensive.

Asian Trade and European Affluence

Modern Asian Studies, 1988

An extended review essay critiquing the 1986 work of S. Arasaratnam on Coromandel trade between 1650 and 1740.