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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2010
In the last issue of Itinerario (vol. XVI, 1992/2), Jan Breman of the University of Amsterdam, has published an English translation of his introduction to the third edition of his book Koelies, Planters en Koloniale Politiek. In this article, titled ‘Controversial Views on Writing Colonial History’, Breman tries to deal with some of the ‘more sceptical and sometimes even hostile’ reactions to his book on plantation labour in East Coast Sumatra during the last decades of the nineteenth century. However, his contribution has a more important purport, as he suggests a specific way in which the history of the colonial past should be written, dismissing at the same time the approach to the colonial past undertaken by what he calls the ‘Leiden Revisionist School’.
1 See, for instance, Stoler, Ann Laura, ‘Rethinking Colonial Categories: European Communities and the Boundaries of Rule’, in: Dirks, Nicholas B. ed., Colonialism and Culture (Ann Arbor 1992) 319–352Google Scholar.
2 Houben, V.J.H., ‘Menyang Tanah Sabrang. Javanese Coolie Migration In- and Outside Indonesia 1900–1940’.Paper presented at the Conference on The Malay Archipelago and the World Economy,1790Google Scholar–1990s. Canberra, November 23–27, 1992.
3 Smail, John R.W., ‘On the possibility of an autonomous history of modern Southeast Asia’, Journal of Southeast Asian History 1 (1961) 72–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
