The Sugar Plantation in India and Indonesia

Ulbe Bosma is Senior Researcher at the International Institute of Social History and Professor of International Comparative Social History at the Free University of Amsterdam. He is coauthor of Being 'Dutch' in the Indies: A History of Creolisation and Empire, 1500-1920 (with Remco Raben, 2008).

• Introduction; 1. Producing sugar for the world; 2. East Indian sugar versus slave sugar; 3. Java: from cultivation to plantation conglomerate; 4. Sugar, science, and technology: Java and India in the late nineteenth century; 5. The era of the global sugar market, 1890–1929; 6. Escaping the plantation?; Conclusion.

'This well-researched global history of a major traditional industry of Asia (sugar) breaks new ground. Departing from the usual preoccupation with plantations, Bosma draws our attention to small-scale production systems and associated property regimes, and connects sugar with empire, India with Indonesia, and colonial developments with postcolonial ones. The book should encourage historians to rethink the notion of industrialization.' Tirthankar Roy, London School of Economics and Political Science