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Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies
ISSN: 0007-4918 (Print) 1472-7234 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbie20
Commodities and Colonialism: The Story of Big
Sugar in Indonesia, 1880–1942
Peter Boomgaard
To cite this article: Peter Boomgaard (2014) Commodities and Colonialism: The Story of Big Sugar in Indonesia, 1880–1942, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 50:1, 138-140, DOI: 10.1080/00074918.2014.896257
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074918.2014.896257
Published online: 24 Mar 2014.
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138 Book Reviews
too, emphasises that a focus on cleavage politics is insuficient to understand
trends in Indonesian party politics after 1999.
In all, Party Politics in Southeast Asia is another important contribution to the emerging literature on electoral competition across Southeast Asia, and its treat-ment of Indonesia provides useful conceptual insights and empirical data with which to make sense of recent developments in party politics. Together, the two works reviewed here have broader theoretical implications for how to think about political institutions, both in Indonesia and, more broadly, across emerging democracies. First, institutions are contested: powerful actors attempt to shape the
rules of the political arena to it their own perception of their interests. Second,
the rules of the political arena are consequential: the minutiae of electoral system design have large implications for democratic political competition, even when we allow that they are themselves subject to contestation. Third, these struggles are disembedded: democratic politics cannot be reduced to competition among soci-etal actors; it instead requires an autonomous role for the political process itself. Finally, that process can prove more important than what initially appear to be insurmountable historical or structural constraints on what is politically possible.
Thomas B. Pepinsky
Cornell University
© 2014 Thomas B. Pepinsky
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074918.2014.896274
Liddle, R. William, and Saiful Mujani. 2013. ‘Indonesian Democracy from Transition to Consolidation’. In Democracy and Islam in Indonesia, edited by Mirjam Kunkler and Alfred Stepan. New York: Columbia University Press.
Lipset, Seymour Martin, and Stein Rokkan. 1967. ‘Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments’. In Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, edited by Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan. New York: Free Press.
Pepinsky, Thomas B. 2009. Economic Crises and the Breakdown of Authoritarian Regimes: Indo-nesia and Malaysia in Comparative Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press. Rustow, Dankwart A. 1970. ‘Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model’.
Com-parative Politics 2 (3): 337–63.
Slater, Dan. 2004. ‘Indonesia’s Accountability Trap: Party Cartels and Presidential Power after Democratic Transition’. Indonesia 78: 61–92.
Commodities and Colonialism: The Story of Big Sugar in Indonesia, 1880–1942. By
G. Roger Knight. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Pp. xi + 291. Hardback: €112/$146.
G. Roger Knight and Java sugar belong together. Since the early 1980s, Knight has
published article upon article on Java’s sugar industry, mainly between 1830 and 1942. Indeed, any article on Java sugar published during the last 30 years is bound to be from his hand (with a few exceptions). His readers have been waiting for
him to synthesise this work, and now, inally, their patience has been rewarded.
Commodities and Colonialism unfolds over eight chapters (plus an introduction and a conclusion). The book deals with the high or late colonial period, 1880 to 1942, during which the production of (cane) sugar in Java—the ‘Indonesia’ in the title is misleading—was almost constantly increasing, except for in the early 1930s (owing to the severe economic depression of those years). Sugar exports in Java
Book Reviews 139
grew more or less at the same rate during the same period (again, exclusive of the 1930s); almost all factory-produced cane sugar was exported, while the local pop-ulation usually consumed ‘brown’ sugars, including palm sugar. From around 1895, cane yields per hectare in Java also increased constantly. In other words, the story of big sugar is one of success, at least from the industry’s point of view.
Knight discusses the many elements that, taken together, shaped the industry’s development, from the role of the state to the roles of capital, mechanisation, land, labour, agronomics, and of foreign demand. The (colonial) state, for example, was usually supportive of ‘big sugar’, but there were relatively brief episodes of a more critical attitude, such as the period of the so-called Ethical Policy, during the early decades of the 20th century. Usually, however, the colonial bureaucracy helped the industry acquire land and labour.
It must be remembered that in Java during the high colonial period the sugar
plantations, as a rule, were employing (renting) peasant-owned rice ields on
which to grow cane, and that land was almost always in demand—in contrast to the abundance of suitable land in Cuba, for example, which was Java’s main competitor for many years. However, there was an advantage in employing peas-ant land for cane: it did not have to be cleared of its original vegetation. Con-versely, labour in Java was usually relatively cheap and plentiful, which was to be expected on such a densely populated island. Yet it could still be scarce, locally and temporarily.
Knight discusses at length the role of capital in the early years of the period,
when the sugar industry went through a dificult patch (with which the author deals rather briely) and had to be rescued by capital from the Netherlands.
Knight emphasises that the people behind this ‘Dutch’ capital had many ‘Indies’ connections, and that some authors have made too much of the contrast (Dutch versus Indies). He also states that the ‘rescue’ operation was essentially a
short-term exercise anyway, not a long-short-term inlow of investment capital from the Neth -erlands. Most of the time, however, the sugar industry did not need much outside money, because it reinvested its earnings.
Knight acknowledges that mechanisation was restricted to the factories, where innovative technology had been applied at an early stage. Labour being relatively
plentiful, work in the ields, where most labour was deployed, underwent little mechanisation, apart from the transport of cane from the ields to the factory.
Knight’s discussion of agronomic elements includes the industry’s voracious
use of artiicial fertiliser and the development of high-yielding cane varieties,
such as the celebrated POJ 2878, POJ being short for Proefstation Oost-Java, the experimental station where it was developed. Knight also devotes much space
to examining the luctuating demand from foreign markets. He rightly stresses
that Java sugar’s main markets were in Asia, and that when these markets (India, Taiwan, China, Japan) became autarchic after 1929, the demand for Java sugar fell, although there was a short revival on the eve of the Japanese invasion of 1942.
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. My main quibble is that the author has collected so much information, mainly on the big players in Java’s sugar industry, including the senior civil servants, that the balance between interesting facts and structural developments is sometimes at risk. It is understandable, but disappointing, that the book does not cover 1820–80, the formative years of mechanised sugar in Java.
140 Book Reviews
Finally, a small detail: Knight translates the Dutch word welvaart (as in onderzoek naar de mindere welvaart [investigation into the reduced prosperity]) with the Eng-lish term ‘welfare’, something often done by Dutch people, but he, a native speaker of English, should have known better. ‘Welfare’ is a much too modern term (‘the welfare state’); in my view, ‘prosperity’ would be a perfectly adequate translation.
Peter Boomgaard
KITLV, Leiden; University of Amsterdam; European University Institute, Florence
© 2014 Peter Boomgaard
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074918.2014.896257
Education in Indonesia. Edited by Daniel Suryadarma and Gavin W. Jones.
Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2013. Pp. xxvi + 278. Paperback: S$29.90/$24.90.
Education in Indonesia is mainly a collection of papers given at The Australian National University’s Indonesia Update conference in September 2012. In general, it provides the reader with a very reasonable and balanced picture of the state of the Indonesian education sector and its many problems. Additional chapters beyond the papers presented at the conference add value to the book by widening its scope. The book speaks to many of the more recent developments in the sec-tor, draws on an impressive group of knowledgeable contributors, and contains a good blend of descriptive information and analysis. Its commentary is thoughtful and its recommendations often insightful.
As with any compendium of papers that attempts to ‘capture the moment’, this
volume’s facts and igures and its interpretations of policy, policy intent, and pol -icy opportunity may by now appear a little dated. This should not distract or dis-suade the potential reader: the descriptive material and the consideration given to many of the challenges faced by Indonesia make this collection particularly
valu-able. Many of the authors’ efforts acknowledge the dificult task ahead of Indo -nesia as it moves to bring its education system on a par with others in the region. The volume provides the reader with a reasonably comprehensive overview of the context and progress of recent policy reforms. It also gives a broader view of the options before many stakeholders, as they determine how best to move away from a somewhat debilitating status quo and transform large parts of a very com-plex and partially dysfunctional education system. Many of its chapters express concern about how best to gain much better returns from the very large public and private investments in the sector.
Most obvious and most welcome is the constructive tone of the book’s 12 chap-ters, which carry a resilient, glass-half-full (or better) set of messages about Indo-nesian education. On the one hand, the book speaks to and illustrates the gains of the last two decades, in both access and policy reform. On the other hand, it pro-vides effective descriptions of where, and gives telling advice on why, some critical reforms have yet to have the intended impact on low-performing elements of the sector. Perhaps the most obvious examples are the discussions of teacher policy reforms and the central government’s attempts to improve the quality of
school-ing by way of teacher certiication and salary inducements. The book frames the