Two Colonial Empires

The most readable essay in this volume is by W.R. Hugenholtz, who wrote about Famine and Food Supply in Java 1830-1914. I did not learn of the famine in various years in Demak, Grobogan, etc. in grade school history lessons so it was new information for me.

However I'm fairly disturbed by the presentation of the Dutch colonizers as a government who merely administer a region, almost as if they were comparable to present day democratic government who are accountable to their subjects.

Probably the only reference to the ills of colonization in this book is this anodyne sentence:

“These payments [from the Cultivation System] were not commensurate with the market value of the products or with the efforts required from the planters.”

The above sentence was from C. Fasseur's essay on the Cultivation System and Its Impact on the Dutch Colonial Economy and the Indigenous Society in 19th Century Java. This essay is also one of the more informative essays in the book, it was well written and structured. Nevertheless, the quoted sentence above was all the more remarkable really because the essay as a whole advocated the reader to look at the Cultivation System more favorably, claiming that it didn't have many negative effects.

I really don't know how to judge the claims, not having read many literatures about the Cultivation System. I must admit it bothers me a lot though. I know I should probably read more about the Indonesian colonial history.

Comparisons with the British Indian colony in this book's essays mainly went over my head because my lack of familiarity with the subcontinent.