Commodities and Colonialism: The Story of Big Sugar in Indonesia, 1880-1942(286 Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde)

Sugar yesterday was what oil is today: a commodity of immense global importance whose tentacles reached deep into politics, society and economy. Indonesia’s colonial-era sugar industry is largely forgotten today, except by a small number of regional specialists writing for a specialist audience. During the period 1880-1942 covered by this book, however, the then Netherlands Indies was one of the world’s very greatest producer-exporters of the commodity. How it contrived to do so is the story presented in this book. Author G. Roger Knight, associate professor of history in the University of Adelaide, has researched the history of Indonesia’s sugar industry for more than twenty-five years, using unpublished archival sources in both the Netherlands and Indonesia. His search has taken him into government records, family histories and – above all – the extensive surviving papers of the Dutch sugar companies who operated in Indonesia during the late colonial era. The result is a picture of the industry that offers important new insights into its history and its place in the framework of global commodity production over a period extending over three quarters of a century.

About the Author :
G. Roger Knight, Ph.D. (1968) University of London, is Associate Professor in the School of History and Politics, University of Adelaide. He is the author of several monographs and numerous articles on the social and economic history of colonial Indonesia.

Review :
"The book is a good read, and will be the text of reference for many years to come. It is impossible to think of a better guide through the intricacies of Java sugar than Knight." – Peter Boomgaard, KITLV, University of Amsterdam, European University Institute "The strength of this book [lies] in the qualitative argument and the eloquently presented synthesis." – Thomas Lindblad, in: International Review of Social History 59.1 (2014), p. 141-143 "While the book is surely essential for anyone interested in sugar, it has even more to offer. Knight’s approach is holistic in the sense that he shows that there is more to the sugar industry than control over land and labour, deployment of global expert knowledge, and entrepreneurship. He convincingly argues that in Java the sugar industry remained entangled with the colonial state, through policies and through personal networks. [...] His work is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how the Dutch colonial upper layer functioned and managed to secure Dutch colonial and private commercial interests in one go." – Alicia Schrikker, Leiden University, in: World Sugar History Newsletter 49 (2018)