Plantations, Proletarians and Peasants in Colonial Asia

This volume originated in a conference on 'Capitalist Plantations in Colonial Asia', held at the Centre for Asian Studies of the University of Amsterdam and Free University of Amsterdam in September 1990. The contributions to this collection focus on the production of rubber, sugar, tea, and several less strategic plantation crops, in colonial Indochina, Java, Malaya, the Philippines, India, Ceylon, Mauritius and Fiji (although geographically anomalous, both the latter are included because of the centrality to their sugar plantations of indentured labour from India).

Henry Berstein, Tom Brass, E. Valentine. Daniel

Introduction: Proletarianisation and Deproletarianisation on the Colonial Plantation, 'White Gold' or 'White Blood'?: The Rubber Plantations of Colonial Indochina, 1910-40, The Java Sugar Industry as a Capitalist Plantation: A Reappraisal, Labour Control and Labour Resistance in the Plantations of Colonial Malaya, Sugar Barons: Formation of a Native Planter Class in the Colonial Philippines, Tea and Money versus Human Life': The Rise and Fall of the Indenture System in Rana and the Assam Tea Plantations 1840-1908, Plantation Labour in Colonial India, 'Enclave' Plantations, 'Hemmed-In' Villages and Dualistic Representations in Colonial Ceylon, Strategies of Labour Mobilisation in Colonial India: The Recruitment of Indentured Workers for Mauritius, 'Coolie' as a Labour Commodity: Race, Sex, and European Dignity in Colonial Fiji, Conclusion: The Making of a Coolie