Extremes in the Archipelago: Trade and Economic Development in the Outer Islands of Indonesia, 1900-1942 (review)

Extremes in the Archipelago: Trade and Economic Development in the Outer Islands of Indonesia, 1900-1942. By Jeroen Touwen. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2001. Pp. 459. Although the fabled "Spice Islands" were originally located in eastern Indonesia, during Dutch colonial rule the island of Java assumed, over time, centrality of the Dutch East Indies. That is until the 1900s. Jeroen Touwen has written a volume that restores some balance through an analysis of trading patterns in the outer islands of the Dutch East Indies during the late colonial period. By "Outer Islands" Touwen means everything outside of Java. The enormity of this undertaking should be readily apparent given the extraordinary diversity of these regions in just about every conceivable manner — coupled with the massive volume of statistics that the author has clearly had to sift through in order to identify patterns. Touwen draws the conclusion that between 1900 and 1942 there was a shift in economic importance away from Java to the Outer Islands, to the extent that the latter probably assumed equal prominence, especially through trade in coffee, pepper, rubber, copra, and tobacco (and a number of other commodities). This finding, identified early in the book, is then backed up with the large amount of brokered data that follows. Touwen makes the stated assumption that indigenous export production was "a positive development" (p. 7). Like the overall scope of the book and some of its terms, the author does a good job of providing a definition for his use of the term "indigenous" (ibid) — a necessary thing given the contested notion of what this means in the case of Indonesia. A major theme of the book is an attempt to tell something of the history of indigenous bulk commodity production and trade through the statistics, rather than just the colonial history. He argues that the indigenous sector "rivalled" European export production (p. 163) in the Outer Islands, and is therefore a major factor in commercial relations, deserving of a place in the history books. In order to give sense to the patterns, Touwen presents the dyad of European and Asian economic activity. The use of the term "European" allows inclusion of non-Dutch commercial agents from Europe (and to a lesser extent the United States), while the term "Asian" allows the author to throw together indigenous commercial operations with Chinese and Arab interlocutors. The leading role of middlemen is seen as important to the story and therefore "Asian dynamics" refers to the activities of "Chinese (and sometimes Arab, or Malay, Minangkabau, Macassarese, Banjarese, or Bugis)" (p. 314). Touwen does not fully explain at any length why these groups — indigene and émigré — should be clustered together, except to point out in the conclusion that the role of Chinese entrepreneurs and businessmen is still important to Indonesia's economy. There is also the difficulty of disentangling various "Asian" groups, even if ethnic Arabs are included for the purposes required here. The book is very well written, but the occasional sentence proves to be awkward or ambiguous. The practice of dropping in the odd Indonesia term without explanation, or where the English would do just as well, will be a minor frustration to the non-specialist audience (for example, "toko keepers" [p. 93] and "pinang nuts" [p. 194] instead of shop keepers and betel nut). Another minor detraction of this book has to do with some of the background theory and history. Touwen succinctly repeats the well-known arguments for and against dependency theory (pp. 25-28), before declaring that "fi]n this study no explicit use will be made of the dependency theories" (p. 27). One wonders if the surrounding explanation is needed, and if these introductory sections could have been streamlined. By contrast, the background history to the time period in question is brief. No introductory explanation is given to the development and nature of the Dutch colonial rule, including its hitherto economic control, bar scattered snippets throughout the body of the book. Furthermore some regions have the history of colonial acquisition mentioned — such as Aceh, Manado, Bengkulu, and Maluku — while a number of others do not. And while the book in no way glamourizes ASEAN Economic Bulletin 304 Vol.20...