ABSTRACT
During the past decade constructive and stimulating new approaches towards the economic history of Indonesia have been made. 1 As the Asian economies are booming and reshaping the commercial face of the world, historians of the Malay archipelago are reshaping their world in an effort to substantiate the dynamics that underlie contemporary socio-political and economic developments in the region. Rather than studying the effects of Western economic impact and analyzing the contributions of Asian entrepreneurs as a derivative, scholars are increasingly interested in the flexibility, adaptiveness and resilience of these entrepreneurial groups. Somehow their works and labor were much more responsible for Asia’s longue duree than Western business activities.
