This book offers a comprehensive account of indentured Chinese labour in the Dutch East Indies between 1880 and 1942, particularly in its twilight years after 1917. The author shows that Chinese indenture started and evolved differently from other forms of bonded labour in Southeast Asia and globally, including its Indian and Javanese variants. This difference is reflected in its lexicon, which was in part special to the Chinese strain. Using fieldwork findings from the tin islands of Bangka and Belitung and the Deli plantations on Sumatra as well as archival materials in Dutch, Chinese, and other languages held in libraries in Java, Nanjing, Taipei, Hong Kong, and Leiden, this book presents cutting-edge research that sets out to contribute to the revising of our historical understanding of indenture.

This book offers a comprehensive account of indentured Chinese labour in the Dutch East Indies between 1880 and 1942, particularly in its twilight years after 1917. The author shows that Chinese indenture started and evolved differently from other forms of bonded labour in Southeast Asia and globally, including its Indian and Javanese variants. This difference is reflected in its lexicon, which was in part special to the Chinese strain. Using fieldwork findings from the tin islands of Bangka and Belitung and the Deli plantations on Sumatra as well as archival materials in Dutch, Chinese, and other languages held in libraries in Java, Nanjing, Taipei, Hong Kong, and Leiden, this book presents cutting-edge research that sets out to contribute to the revising of our historical understanding of indenture.

Professor Wang Gungwu is the Institute of Policy Studies' 12th S R Nathan Fellow for the Study of Singapore. This book is an edited collection of his four IPS-Nathan Lectures, delivered from November 2022 to March 2023, and includes highlights of his question-and-answer segments with our audience.The Southeast Asian region is home to a set of diverse local cultures and distinct local identities. In this lecture series, Professor Wang looks at how great civilisations came into contact with our region and shaped its local identities and cultures. Being at the centre of Southeast Asia, Singapore's national identity and development have also been moulded by great ancient civilisations, namely the Indic, Sinic and Islamic. Later on, the idea of modernity brought about by Christian European civilisation greatly impacted our region. Understanding the history of Singapore from this perspective will give us insight to how the country's modern identity is being shaped and enable us to better understand our region's place in the modern world order.The IPS-Nathan Lecture series was launched in 2014 as part of the S R Nathan Fellowship for the Study of Singapore, named after Singapore's sixth and longest-serving president. It seeks to advance public understanding and discussion of issues of critical national interest for Singapore.

Chinese Colonial Entanglements takes a new geographical approach to understanding the Chinese diaspora, shining a light on Chinese engagement in labor, trade, and industry in the British colonies of the southern Asia Pacific. Starting from the 1880s, a decade when British colonization was rapidly expanding and establishing new industries and townships, this volume covers the period up to 1950, including the 1930s when economic competition saw new racialized immigration restrictions, and the 1940s when Chinese traders found new opportunities. The editors, Julia T. Martínez, Claire Lowrie, and Gregor Benton, bring together nine historians of Chinese diaspora in an effort to break down the boundaries of traditional area studies. Collectively, the chapters offer fresh comparative and transnational perspectives on economic entanglements across a region bounded by the Malay archipelago, Australia, New Zealand, and the islands of the western Pacific. Histories of white settler colonies such as Australia have tended to view Chinese diasporic experiences through the lens of exclusionary politics and closed borders. This book challenges such interpretations, bringing to the fore Chinese economic endeavors that connected Australia with Southeast Asia and the Pacific. The volume begins with an introduction that makes the case for a regional approach to Chinese diaspora history. This is followed by chapters on colonial commodity production where Chinese traders and workers were central to the development of colonial banana, phosphate, and furniture industries. These industries reflect the diversity of Chinese roles, from small business owners to indentured workers for British colonial enterprise. The book then explores the economic activities of Chinese business elite from revenue farming to intercolonial trading and rural retail. It points to colonial restrictions on business development and explains how Chinese enterprises sought to overcome restrictions through relationships with colonial leaders and by mobilizing Chinese family and transnational business networks in case studies from British North Borneo, Australia, and Samoa. Relying on diverse sources, including archival correspondence, Chinese-language newspapers, personal letters and oral histories, the authors reveal the importance of social, familial, and political connections in shaping the relationships between the colonial authorities and Chinese workers and traders.

This examination of the formation of the Indonesian medical profession reveals the relationship between medicine and decolonisation, and its importance to understanding Asian history.

A concise and compelling survey of Chinese migration in global history centered on Chinese migrants and their families.

The various manifestations of coerced labour between the opening up of the Atlantic world and the formal creation of Haiti.

A ground-breaking analysis of how the Malayan Communist Party helped forge a Malayan national identity, while promoting Chinese nationalism.

Migration flows in the former Dutch colonial orbit created an intricate web connecting the Netherlands to Africa, Asia and the Americas; Africa to the Americas and to Asia; in the nineteenth century Asia to the Americas, with, in the post-Second World War period, the direction of migration shifting to the Netherlands. Some of these migrations were voluntary, others were forced; they helped to create colonial societies that were never typically Dutch, but did have Dutch characteristics. Power imbalance, ethnic differences and creolization characterized the cultural configuration of these colonial societies. This book, with contributions by a number of Dutch scholars, provides state-of-the-art discussions on these migration histories. In addition, it presents reflections on the ways this past and its repercussions are remembered (or forgotten, or actively silenced) throughout the former colonial empire. This part of the book is embedded in the wider contemporary debate about the contested concept of cultural heritage, and about the possibility of meaningful cultural heritage policies in a post-colonial world.