Willem van Schendel has served as Professor of Modern Asian History at the University of Amsterdam and as head of the South Asia Department, International Institute of Social History. Among his recent books are The Camera as Witness: A Social History of Mizoram, Northeast India (with Joy Pachuau); A History of Bangladesh and Global Blue: Indigo and Espionage in Colonial Bengal. Recent co-edited volumes are Labour Migration and Human Trafficking in Southeast Asia: Critical Perspectives and The Bangladesh Reader: History, Culture, Politics.

• Embedding Agricultural Commodities:Using Historical Evidence, 1840s-1940sTable of ContentsList of FiguresContributors1. Embedding Agricultural Commodities – An Introduction Willem van Schendel2. Staying Embedded: The Rocky Existence of an Indigo Maker in Bengal Willem van Schendel3. Multatuli, the Liberal Colonialists and their Attacks on the Patrimonial Embedding of Commodity Production in JavaUlbe Bosma4. Smallholdings versus European Plantations: The Beginnings of Coffee in Nineteenth-Century Mysore (India)Bhaswati Bhattacharya5. ‘Keeping Land and Labour under Control?’ Reporting on Tobacco-Shed Burnings in Besoeki (Java)Ratna Saptari6. Embedding Cigarette Tobacco in Colonial Bihar (India): A Multi-Dimensional TaskKathinka Sinha-Kerkhoff7. Cuba, Sugarcane and the Reluctant Embedding of Scientific Method: Agete’s La Caña de Azúcar en CubaJonathan Curry-Machado8. Globalization’s Agricultural Roots: Some Final ConsiderationsMarcel van der LindenIndex