The Making of Sino-Dutch Sugar Frontiers in Early Modern Asia: Connections and Comparisons, 1630s-1730s

Early modern globalization is not only about exchange of goods by seas and circulation of knowledge by urban elite, it also took place in remote commodity frontiers where unique frontier society had formed because of the convergence of influence from different agricultural traditions. This thesis aims to fill a gap in the studies of frontier society, that is, the absence of plantation society in early modern Asian history. By exploring the archives of the Dutch East India Company (the VOC) in Den Haag and Jakarta, the untold history of the emergence of Asian sugar plantations in the Dutch East Indies is for the first time fully exhibited. This history offers us an intriguing perspective to think how Chinese agricultural tradition and Dutch rural instituion converged and how that convergence led to divergent sugar societies in Dutch Formosa and in the Ommelanden of Batavia. It also gives us a unique example to compare with the well-known plantation society in the Atlantic and the so...Show moreEarly modern globalization is not only about exchange of goods by seas and circulation of knowledge by urban elite, it also took place in remote commodity frontiers where unique frontier society had formed because of the convergence of influence from different agricultural traditions. This thesis aims to fill a gap in the studies of frontier society, that is, the absence of plantation society in early modern Asian history. By exploring the archives of the Dutch East India Company (the VOC) in Den Haag and Jakarta, the untold history of the emergence of Asian sugar plantations in the Dutch East Indies is for the first time fully exhibited. This history offers us an intriguing perspective to think how Chinese agricultural tradition and Dutch rural instituion converged and how that convergence led to divergent sugar societies in Dutch Formosa and in the Ommelanden of Batavia. It also gives us a unique example to compare with the well-known plantation society in the Atlantic and the so-called small-household economy in China. It is after all a global history in a rural society.Show less

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The Making of Sino-Dutch Sugar Frontiers in Early Modern Asia: Connections and Comparisons, 1630s-1730s