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Controversial Views on Writing Colonial History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2011

Jan Breman
Jan Breman
Affiliation:
(Center for Asian Studies, University of Amsterdam)
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Extract

The discovery of an official report, so far unpublished, about coolie scandals on the plantations on Sumatra's East Coast around the year 1900, motivated me to produce a full-length book on this theme. My original intention had been merely to write a short introduction to the publication of a shocking historical document. However, I changed my mind when it became obvious that proper understanding of the source required more background information on the social and policy framework within which the plantation system operated. This applied both to conditions on the estates themselves and to the evaluation of those affairs by official and non-official outsiders. The main aim of my study is to contribute to the historiography of industrial labour in Southeast Asia. However, it also analyses die linkage that came about between capitalist industry and colonial policy in a region that formed part of the so-called Outer Provinces of die Netherlands Indies.

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Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , July 1992, pp. 39 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1992

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References

Notes

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