ABSTRACT
Anyone who has used Dutch East India Com pany (VOC) records2 will know that they are often stubbornly resistant to the historian's questions. The vast corpus of informa-
tion they contain, however, has provided the basis for a number of detailed studies of
regional history in the Indonesian archipelago. What such studies have shown is that
generalizations regarding social and economic change during the seventeenth and eigh-
draft of this paper was originally presented at the Asian Studies Association of Australia Bicentennial Conference held at the Australian National University in February 1988. The research on which it was based is part of a larger study on the history of Jambi and Palembang ca. 1600-1800. Research has been made possible through financial support from Auckland University, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and the Joint Committee on Southeast Asia of the Social Sciences Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies with funds provided by the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. I am also most grateful to the personnel of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, the State Archives in The Hague, the Koninklijk Instituut, and Leiden University Library for invaluable assistance. Without support from so many people it would have been impossible to undertake this study, and to them all I would like to express my deep gratitude.
