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From Subsistence Crises to Business Cycle Depressions, Indonesia 1800-1940*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2010

Peter Boomgaard
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Extract

The spectre of a global crisis, predicted in 1997, but then failing to materialise outside (parts of) Asia, Russia, and Brazil, now looms again. Expectations of the arrival of a world-wide economic recession might constitute a conducive atmosphere for the study of economic crises and depressions in the past, in this case the Indonesian past. It is in fact somewhat amazing that, the study of the 1930s Depression apart, economic and social historians have not taken up this topic more eagerly during the last five years.

Type
Conference: ‘Economic Growth and Institutional Change in Indonesia in the 19th and 20th Centuries’
Information
Itinerario , Volume 26 , Issue 3-4 , November 2002 , pp. 35 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 2002

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References

Notes

1 Abel, Wilhelm, Massenarmut und Hungerkrisen im vorindustriellen Deutschland (Gōttingen 1972) 57Google Scholar; Braudel, Fernand, Capitalism and Material Life 1400–1800 (London 1973)Google Scholar [original French version 1967] 37; Lamb, H.H., Climate, History and the Modern World (London/ New York 1982) 288CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Salaman, Redcliffe N., The History and Social Influence of the Potato (Cambridge, etc. 1985) [first published 1949] 289–316;Google ScholarPonting, Clive, A Green History of the World (Harmondsworth 1991) 106–116Google Scholar.

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7 I have dealt with this phenomenon regarding seventeenth-century Indonesia elsewhere (Boomgaard, Peter, ‘Crisis Mortality in Seventeenth-Century Indonesia’ in: Liu, Tsui-jung et al. eds, Asian Population History (Oxford 2001) 198–199);Google Scholar I am not aware of literature on famine induced wars elsewhere.

8 Jr, H.P. Berlage, ‘Over het verband tusschen de dikte der jaarringen van djatiboomen (Tectona grandis L.f.) en den regenval op Java’, Tectona 24 (1931) 939–953Google Scholar.

9 On harvest failures, crop diseases and pests, see Boomgaard, P. and Zanden, J.L. van, Food Crops and Arable Lands, Java 1815–1942 (Changing Economy in Indonesia 10) (Amsterdam 1990) 45–47; 106–107Google Scholar.

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11 Boomgaard, P. and Gooszen, A.J., Population Trends 1795–1942 (Changing Economy in Indonesia 11) (Amsterdam 1991) 49–50, 55–66, 165–179Google Scholar.

12 On smallpox see Boomgaard, Peter, ‘Smallpox and Vaccination on Java, 1780–1860: Medical Data as a Source for Demographic History’ in: Luyendijk-Elshout, A.M. et al. eds, Dutch Medicine in the Malay Archipelago 1816–1942 (Amsterdam/Atlanta 1989) 119–132;Google Scholar on diseases in general in Indonesia's past, see Boomgaard, Peter, ‘Morbidity and Mortality in Java, 1820–1880: Changing Patterns of Disease and Death’ in: Owen, Norman G. ed., Death and Disease in Southeast Asia: Explorations in Social, Medical and Demographic History (Asian Studies Association of Australia;Google Scholar Southeast Asia Publication Series 14) (Singapore, etc. 1987) 48–69; Gardiner, Peter and Oey, Mayling, ‘Morbidity and Mortality in Java, 1880–1940’ in: Owen, ed., Death and Disease, 70–90;Google ScholarBoomgaard, Peter, Children of the Colonial State: Population Growth and Economic Development in Java, 1795–1880 (Amsterdam 1989) 187–191Google Scholar.

13 A detailed account of the eruption of Mount Tambor a is to be found in Boers, Bernice de Jong, ‘Mount Tambora in 1815: A Volcanic Eruption in Indonesia and its Aftermath’, Indonesia 60 (1995) 36–60Google Scholar.

14 On this possible link see also Carey, Peter B.R., Babad Dipanagara: An Account ofthe Outbreak of the Java War (1825–1830)(Kuala Lumpur 1981) xxxviii, xliiiGoogle Scholar.

15 For a more detailed account of unrest and migration in the 1830s see Boomgaard, Peter, ‘Geweld en protest op Java, 1800–1875’, paper prepared for the 3rd KOTA Conference on Violence in Asia, Amsterdam, 13–1405 1982Google Scholar.

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18 Berlage, ‘Over het verband’, 947Google Scholar.

19 For details on the Banten famine and the events leading up to it see Forbes, H.O., A Naturalist's Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago (New York 1885) 75–76;Google ScholarSandick, R.A. van, Leed en lief uit Bantam (Zutphen 1892) 29, 87Google Scholar; Breitenstein, H., 21 Jahre in Indien; aus dem Tagebuche eines Militärarztes II (Leipzig 1900) 68–69;Google ScholarHugenholtz, , ‘Famine and Food Supply’, 172–174Google Scholar.

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21 For more information on the difficult years at the end of World War Two, see e.g. Creutzberg, P., Het ekonomisch beleid in Nederlandsch-Indië II (Groningen 1972/1975 ) 172–176, 203–273. On the influenza pandemic, see Colin Brown, ‘The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 in Indonesia’ inGoogle ScholarOwen, ed., Death and Disease, 235–256Google Scholar.

22 For more details on government policy regarding trice trade see Creutzberg, , Het ekonomisch beleid II, 171–750; Hugenholtz, ‘Famine and Food Supply’. On a region where people were often on the brink of starvation, seeGoogle ScholarPenders, C.L.M., Bojonegoro 1900–1942: A Story of Endemic Poverty in North-East Java, Indonesia (Singapore 1984)Google Scholar.

23 Grove, Richard H. and Chappell, John eds, El Nino-History and Crisis; Studies from the Asia-Pacific Region (Cambridge 2000) 9Google Scholar.

24 Following Sen, Amartya (Poverty andFamines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford 1981)Google Scholar terms such as ‘entitlement failure’, or ‘deterioration of exchange entitlements’ are now often used to describe such a situation.

25 Jacobs, Jan and Smits, Jan-Pieter, ‘Conjunctuurbewegingen in Nederland gedurende de negentiende eeuw - met een internationale vergelijking’, NEHA-faarboek 64 (2001) 178–199Google Scholar.

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27 I have used the export figures as published (and corrected) by Korthals Altes: Altes, W.L. Korthals, Balance of Payments 1822–1939 (Changing Economy in Indonesia 7) (Amsterdam 1987) 102–110Google Scholar.

28 Mededeelingen betreffende de Kolonien (Art. 60 der Grondwet), Stukken Tweede Kamer, zitting 1849–1850 (xxxvi), Exh. 20Jun i 1850, no. 2 ('s-Gravenhage 1850) 3; Altes, W.L. Korthals, De betalingsbalans van Nederlandsch-Indië 1822–1939 (PhD thesis, University of Rotterdam 1986) 84. For annual exports (values) from the Netherlands, seeGoogle ScholarBie, R.J. van der and Smits, J.P., Tweehonderd jaar statisliek in tijdreeksen, 1800–1999 (Amsterdam 2000)Google Scholar.

29 This refers no doubt to the wars between Prussia on the one hand and Austria and the other German states o n the other, and between Austria and Italy.

30 Koloniaal Verslag (published annually) (Batavia 1864-1873).

31 Creutzberg, , Het ekonomisch beleid I, xvii, xxx-xxxiiiGoogle Scholar; Eng, Van der, Agricultural Growth, 102Google Scholar; Booth, Anne, The Indonesian Economy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: A History of Missed Opportunities (London/New York 1998) 18, 31–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Boomgaard, Peter, ‘Surviving the Slump: Development in Real Income during the Depression of the 1930s in Indonesia, Particularly Java’ in: Boomgaard, Peter and Brown, Ian eds, Weathering the Storm: The Economies of Southeast Asia in the 1930s Depression (Singapore/Leiden 2000) 23–52Google Scholar.