ABSTRACT
The case of colonial-era sugar production on the Indonesian island of Java is important to any global re-assessment of themes related to worker subordination and resistance in the context of servile or unfree labour. On the basis of industrialized manufacture unparalleled elsewhere in Asia, the Java sugar industry entered the ranks of major producers for a rapidly growing international trade in the commodity during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Indeed, from about 1870 onward, Java stood second only to Cuba as an exporter of cane sugar to world markets. Java’s colonial sugar industry, however, has tended to be considered sui generis and isolated from discussions of New World sugar production because of Java’s geographic location and the predominantly insular character of its own extensive historiography.
