State and Trade in the Indonesian Archipelago. Edited by G.J. Schutte. KITLV Working Papers; 13. Leiden: KITLV Press, 1994. 199 pp., bibliography, index. Reviewed by Eric Tagliacozzo, Cornell University (History Department).

This volume is the result of the Fifth Indonesian-Dutch History Conference held at Lage Vuursche in the Netherlands, in June of 1986.

Though it took eight years for the conference contents to be published because of unforeseen delays, the final volume was worth the wait for several reasons. The nine papers that G.J. Schutte was able to include in the volume all deal with state power and its intersection with trade currents in various parts of the Indonesian archipelago; they also manage to cross four hundred years of history, ranging from the seventeenth to
the early twentieth centuries. As such, this is one of the very few contributions to the literature that can boast both geographic and temporal breadth on this topic, which is no small achievement. Though the papers themselves are a bit uneven, their inclusion under one rubric makes for a useful study, one that illuminates the dynamics of trade and governance across the history of the Indies.

R.Z. Leirissa's contribution tackles these concepts in the Seram Sea, in the distant eastern province of Maluku. Leirissa is interested in Van Leur's thesis on the "peddling trade" of the Indies, and finds it rather unelaborated, at least in Eastern Indonesia. Rather than focusing strictly on the economic aspects of the commerce in spices and marine goods (what colonial Europeans often called "exotica"), Leirissa traces the intersection of trade with political jurisdiction, which was complex and overlapping in large parts of the Seram Sea. Ternate and Tidore's power radiated outward from their home islands, but unevenly into the Maluku "periphery"; some areas were controlled tightly, while others were only held on a long leash, if they were controlled at all. Bugis, Chinese, and Javanese merchants also traded here, as did the Dutch, who were increasingly able to dictate the parameters of commerce by the mid-19th century. Leirissa is interested in central place theory in these waters, and makes a compelling case in showing the many levels where "centrality" was decided, both in political and economic terms (it should be noted that Roy Ellen's important article on this topic is not included in the bibliography, which would have helped sharpen the argument in places.)

Moving to Java, Suhartono's contribution on the "Cina Klonthong," or rural Chinese peddlers, is equally fascinating. Suhartono is dealing with the vectors of trade and mobility in the fulcrum of Dutch power, rather than the periphery, yet many of the same issues come to bear as in Leirissa's study. As in the Seram Sea, the further away from state power that the merchants moved, the more freedom they exhibited in their economic activities. In Java, the prices the Cina Klonthong charged went up in the more distant stretches of countryside. Yet as with the maritime realm, Dutch power was expanding in the overland interior too (via roads, railroads, and plantations), so that the state gradually encroached on these far-flung networks as well. Pass systems were implemented in both places. Suhartono shows how difficult it was, though, to fully restrict these merchants' activities, as the laws of the pass system were continually flouted (and even ignored) unless Batavia backed them by force. The result was a continual negotiation between trader and state, as each used the other for its own ends, while trying to expand influence and control in the rural Javanese countryside.

Muhammad Gade Ismail's examination of local commerce and Dutch power in West Borneo in the early nineteenth century also continues these themes. Here, the economic and political actors were coastal Malays, Chinese miners, "Dayaks" of the interior, and the Dutch -- a broad cast of characters who complicated the balance of power considerably. Up until the turn of the 19th century, the author tells us, this balance was skewed to favor the coasts, as taxation of goods, and mining licenses, both flowed through the hands of the Sultan of Sambas. Yet by the early 19th century, the Chinese mining kongsis in the interior were becoming too powerful to accede to these uneven terms any longer, and were compelling "Dayaks" to trade on their own terms, to the kongsis' great advantage.

Power in West Borneo was riverine: whoever controlled the great waterways (and the many, smaller tributaries of these rivers) controlled the movement of goods and human beings. Here too, the Dutch were slowly able to inject their authority into the proceedings, first by invitation of the waning Sultan of Sambas, and later through their own devices. These fortunes are traced by the author, as each of the ethnic groups vied for power and autonomy, the bases of which were guaranteed through trade. 

The other contributions to the volume -- by Sedyawati, Schoorl, Houben, Nagtegaal, Vos, and van Baardewijk -- deal with further elaborations of these themes in Java, Riau, and South Sumatra. Trade and political compulsion are shown in nearly all of these papers to be two sides of the same coin, a state of affairs that both Europeans -- and local peoples of the archipelago -- understood very clearly. Schutte has done a service by bringing these essays together under one cover, and the book should be a welcome addition to the literature, both in Indonesian studies and beyond.