Asian Studies: Agrarian History and Orientalism

Abstract

J.C. van Leur, Indonesian Trade and Society: Essays in Asian Social and Economic History (Foris Publications, Dordrecht, Holland/USA 1983). 465 p.Six essays by J.C. van Leur (1908-1942) were published in English translation in 1955 as the first volume in the series Selected Studies on Indonesia by Dutch Scholars and the above is an unrevised, photomechanic reprint of the same. The bibliography of Van Leur's writings which is provided in the volume lists another 37 separate items, articles, journalism, reviews, etc. that bear out the author's multifarious involvement in contemporary affairs in Indonesia and elsewhere and which may be of interest to many who have regretted Van Leur's neglect of the history of Indonesia in the 19th and 20th centuries in his major writings. The present six essays all deal with pre-colonial Indonesian or Asian social and economic history and the colonial period is passed over in a few paragraphs.