Colonialism Revisited: Recent Historiography

Author(s): Robert Van Niel

Source: Journal of World History, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Spring, 1990), pp. 109-124
Published by: University of Hawai'i Press on behalf of World History Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20078458
Accessed: 06-03-2020 01:46 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

World History Association, University of Hawai'i Press are collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of World History

This content downloaded from 202.43.95.72 on Fri, 06 Mar 2020 01:46:35 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Colonialism Revisited:
Recent Historiography*
ROBERT VAN NIEL
University of Hawaii

Since
hourwe
frommay
now, I end
thoughtup with
it well various
to begin conclusions
by putting us all on about half an
the same footing by making more precise what I am going to talk
about.1 Colonialism, as we generally use the word today, has noth
ing to do with the settlement of colonies on foreign soil. It has
instead to do with the domination by a strong state over a weaker
people, whom?to follow Tony Smith's definition?it does not con
trol in the same way as its home population.2 There is, moreover,
an implicit assumption that colonialism was carried out by Euro
pean nations (later the United States and Japan are added) in mod
ern times through a process we call imperialism.
By this general definition and assumption, colonialism as we
are wont to use that term began some time around 1500 and lasted
until about 1950, when most, but not all, of the colonial territories
were granted or gained political independence. This was a world
wide phenomenon.
It is not my intention to speak about colonialism all over the
world; I shall concentrate my remarks on the area I know best,
southeast Asia. This is a region that in the course of time was sub

* This paper was presented as a talk to the Asia Conference of the American
Historical Association at its annual meeting in Washington, D.C., on December 29,
1987. The paper has been left in the spoken form in which it was delivered; only the
footnotes have been added.
1 John King Fairbank, China Watch (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), p. 11, casts some
light on the use of the terms "imperialism" and "colonialism" by Americans.
2 Tony Smith, The Pattern of Imperialism (Cambridge, 1981), p. 6.

Journal of World History, Vol. i, No. i

? 1990 by University of Hawaii Press

109

This content downloaded from 202.43.95.72 on Fri, 06 Mar 2020 01:46:35 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
no JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, S

jected to the colonialism in various places of

These six used various devices and determ
trol. It is not my intention to dwell on thes
comparative colonial administration a subje
cance today. I shall be speaking of colonia
terms, but I mention the diversity so that you
there are no absolutes and that the wider
will call to mind events and developments i
America, and the Pacific Islands.
So, I will be revisiting colonialism in sout
be doing this through recent historiography
Southeast Asia was a region of great cu
economic diversity before colonialism en
coastal and riverine portions of the region
of the shipping link between the Indian Oc
so that peoples, ideas, and products crisscro
inland and upland areas of southeast Asia
this contact and remained isolated, retain
patterns. Colonialism, when it came, tended
the area of outside contact, resulting in co
the smaller ethnic groups, but even thr
period this diversity remained one of the pr
of the region. Despite this, however, there
of southeast Asian life patterns that O. W.
on a cognatic kinship system that manifest
unstable succession arrangements requirin
ment of personal power through redistribut
hierarchy, extensive ceremonials, manipu
ritualized actions.31 make note of these ear
east Asia region so that you will understand
sity, there are some generalizations that
entire region, and that European colonial
diverse in its own right?had to cope with si
totally dissimilar.
European colonial control began in som
teenth and sixteenth centuries, but in m
Asia it did not begin until the nineteenth ce
its areas, never. Until the end of World War II
east Asia as a region was unknown. The hist
colonies was written by historians of the c

3 O. W. Wolters, History, Culture, and Region in Sou

(Singapore, 1982).

This content downloaded from 202.43.95.72 on Fri, 06 Mar 2020 01:46:35 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Van Niel: Colonialism Revisited in

other western countries. The indigenous inhab

chronicles, memoirs, and genealogies, but noth
call history. The westerners wrote a history t
colonial endeavor: its successes and failures; its
arbitrary and corrupt rule; and its crusade
undirectedness. This colonial history, as it cam
colonialism?its practices and policies?as the
historical change in the various colonies of t
before World War II there were calls for recon
viewpoint, but it was only in the 1950s that thi
should point out that even this colonial histor
in large quantity until the twentieth century
the so-called histories of the parts of the regi
early or precolonial period; and the historia
wrote these accounts were chiefly archaeolog
and philologists. These works dealt in only gene
European presence.5 The details of colonial rule
secret from the European homelands. Only in
century do details begin to emerge, and then
tively opened: colonial civil servants began to w
and practices in order to influence the home g
this could hardly be called history.6 The point I

4 The change in viewpoint is most frequently attributed

condemned the Eurocentric orientation of colonial histor
review. This review is contained in his collected writing
Society: Essays in Asian Social and Economic History (The
1955)
5 Accounts of the activities of the Dutch East India Company, such as that of
Mr. Pieter van Dam (1621-1706), were not published until the twentieth century; see
Beschryvinge van de Oostindische Compagnie, 4 vols. (The Hague, 1927-32). Fran
?ois Valentyn, Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indi?n, vervattende een naaukeurige en uit
voerige Verhandelinge van Nederlands Mogentheyd in die Gewesten...., 5 vols.
(Dordrecht and Amsterdam, 1724-26), is chiefly a geographical and ethnographical
description with touches of history. Thomas Stamford Raffles, The History of Java,
2 vols. (London, 1817), and William Marsden, The History of Sumatra, 3d ed. (Lon
don, 1811), are the sort of encyclopedic works that dealt with geography, language,
customs, artifacts, flora and fauna, and something called history that consisted
mainly of stories and legends. The Spanish friars in the Philippines were writing
interesting ethnographic descriptions and tracts on colonial policy, but again very
little in the way of history.
6 Until about the middle of the nineteenth century, travel accounts were the
chief medium for conveying information, and these rarely dealt with anything that
could be called history. Only after 1850 do we find a growing number of novels,
newspapers and journals, and government reports that were leaked. In the last
couple of decades of the nineteenth century, as European imperialism spread into
southeast Asia, there were growing numbers of accounts, expos?s, and even histo
ries.

This content downloaded from 202.43.95.72 on Fri, 06 Mar 2020 01:46:35 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
112 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING I99O

that colonial history, written by historians, emerged relatively

late in the nineteenth century and was no longer practiced after
about 1950, when the national independence of the southeast
Asian colonies overtook it.
As I have said, colonial history, by taking an outside point of
view to the history of the colony, saw the forces of change as
emanating from the policies and practices of the colonial govern
ment and administration. Within the scope of colonial history,
however, there were two principal types of history?empirical
and theoretical. Empirical history sought to develop a chronologi
cal narrative based on documentation and observation. Colonial
histories of this sort tended to describe the successes and failures
of the economic, cultural, and administrative penetration of the
western country into the colonial area, seeing this process as part
of the national expansion of the m?tropole. Theoretical history
developed a historical narrative on the premise of a social con
cept reinforced by observation. Theoretical histories were based
on a wide variety of notions ranging from religious predestination
to Marxist socialism to racial and cultural concepts to the world
views of sociological system builders. Both types of historical
approach, the empirical and the theoretical, continue into the
present. I shall deal with both, but I must make clear my own
inclination for empirical history.
The move away from colonial history to the autonomous his
tory of the southeast Asian societies began in the 1950s, initiated
mainly by historians in the United States and the British Com
monwealth. The term "autonomous history" is derived from the
most frequently cited article on this change of orientation (and
everything that went with it), written by John Smail.7 As this pro
cess was much discussed and widely written about, the change
occurred very publicly and quite deliberately. It quickly became
accepted practice among historians to place one's self within the
southeast Asian nation or society of one's choice, and to view and
write its history in terms that reflected the changes within that
nation or society, instead of from the viewpoint of the former
colonial master. This was not quite as simple as I make it sound
here, for the sources needed to make this change did not immedi
ately emerge, and there were frequent reversions to old estab
lished organizational patterns. However, as more information and

7 John R. W. Smail, "On the Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern

Southeast Asia," Journal of Southeast Asian History 2 (1961): 72-102.

This content downloaded from 202.43.95.72 on Fri, 06 Mar 2020 01:46:35 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Van Niel: Colonialism Revisited 113

materials came to light, the endeavor enjoyed enough success so

that by the late 1950s and early 1960s sufficient reoriented histori
cal accounts had appeared to enable teaching faculty to guide stu
dents into the new approach.
In the process of changing this orientation it became evident
that southeast Asian history had a rhythm of its own with impor
tant transitions that were quite different from those used in west
ern history.8 A different periodization scheme was needed to
reflect these changes in emphasis, for the transitions now had to
fit southeast Asian societies. Without dwelling for too long on this
matter, let me simply say that the coming of the Europeans to
southeast Asia around a.D. 1500 was no longer viewed as a signifi
cant event that fundamentally altered southeast Asian history.
Instead, it was increasingly agreed that important changes had
occurred round about a.d. 1300 with the coming of both Islam and
reformed Theravada Buddhism into the area, concurrently with
the gradual emergence of hegemonic states that replaced earlier
paternalistic forms of statecraft. It also came to be seen, thanks to
the writings of W. F. Wertheim, that the real western impact on
southeast Asian societies occurred around a.d. 1800 when signifi
cant social changes became discernable.9 The Philippines, be
cause of the length and depth of its western contact, might seem
somewhat out of step with this new periodization?just as it
seems to be an exception to other modern developments?but
even here, the late eighteenth century, John Larkin tells us, wit
nessed a modernization trend that set the subsequent period
apart from earlier developments.10 The reentry of British power
into the area with its prevailing free-market ideas was a strong
motivator of these changes. What we have generally ended up
with, therefore, is a periodization scheme for southeast Asia that
puts the change from prehistory to the early period of history at
around the fourth century A.D.; the early period extending from
the fourth century to some time around the end of the thirteenth

8 See Harry J. Benda, "The Structure of Southeast Asian History: Some Pre
liminary Observations," Journal of Southeast Asian History 3 (1962): 106-138, for an
early recognition of this point.
9 W. F. Wertheim, Indonesian Society in Transition (The Hague and Bandung,
1956) makes the point most cogently, but the argument was already made before
World War II in the doctoral dissertation of D. H. Burger, "De Ontsluiting van
Java's Binnenland voor het Wereldverkeer" (Wageningen, 1939).
10 John A. Larkin, "Philippine History Reconsidered: A Socioeconomic Per
spective," American Historical Review 87 (1982): 612-13.

This content downloaded from 202.43.95.72 on Fri, 06 Mar 2020 01:46:35 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 114 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING I99O

century; then the modern period beginning around the end of the
thirteenth century, and being divided into an early modern period
and a late modern period with the transition around a.d. 1800.
After about a.d. 1945 or 1950, there comes the contemporary
period. Why am I telling you all this when my subject is supposed
to be colonialism? Quite simply because this changed periodiza
tion has had a direct and dramatic influence on the way in which
colonialism was viewed by historians.
The overall effect of changing orientation and periodization
was to put colonialism into a position that was subordinate to the
domestic history of the region or individual countries. No longer
was colonialism seen as the driving force behind historical events,
though its influence was still seen as extremely important for cer
tain nineteenth- and twentieth-century developments. Colonial
ism became one influence among others that were at work in
southeast Asian societies; its relative importance was still to be
assessed in the new context in which it was now placed. Certainly
the moral and economic values that colonial history had placed
on colonialism were now ready to be challenged as the changing
values and structures of southeast Asian societies took center
stage.11
The groundwork for an autonomous domestic history of south
east Asia, which was laid during the 1950s and early 1960s, was the
work of historians and various social scientists.12 American and
Commonwealth scholars were increasingly joined by indigenous
southeast Asians who were mostly trained at English-speaking
universities. The foundation was in place for building a profes
sional field.
How was colonialism approached in the historical writing of
the mid-1950s? The historical surveys of the region that appeared
at this time did relatively little to alter the emphasis on colonial
ism as the motivating force in the modern period other than to

11 Rudolf von Albertini, "Colonialism and Underdevelopment: Critical Re

marks on the Theory of Dependency," in History and Underdevelopment, ed.
L. Bluss?, H. L. Wesseling, and G. D. Winius (Leiden, 1980), p. 42, notes that coloni
alism must be approached in terms of the former colonial lands, i.e., what impor
tance does the colonial period play in their history?
12 Nancy Farriss, in her Foreword to The Social Life of Things, edited by Arjun
Appadurai (Cambridge, 1986), discusses the blending of history with anthropology
during this period, which resulted in gains for both disciplines and the yet-unre
solved problems.

This content downloaded from 202.43.95.72 on Fri, 06 Mar 2020 01:46:35 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Van Niel: Colonialism Revisited 115

change the value-orientation of events.13 The real effort in this

direction occurred in more specific and detailed studies; and these
fell into essentially two categories, as previously indicated, namely
empirical-based and theory-based studies. I should like to take
brief note of one historical study for each of these two approaches,
one by myself, an empirical historian with some background in
social theory, and the other by Clifford Geertz, a theoretical social
scientist whose studies are based on anthropological observations
plus background historical reading. Both Geertz and I did our
research in Java in the early 1950s and completed our doctoral
degrees, based on this research, in the mid-1950s.
My study looked to the late colonial period and focused on the
emergence of Indonesian leadership groups?leadership in gov
ernment service and leadership in antigovernment activities di
rected toward national independence.14 It became evident to me
that the Indonesians in these categories had, since the 1890s, been
influenced by Islamic Reformism, western-style education, and
an economic and administrative expansion of the colonial govern
ment. These Indonesians were, or had become, urban dwellers. In
this environment they came into daily contact with Europeans
and Chinese in substantial numbers. Many of them experienced
affronts to their persons and to their ethnicity that led them to
associate colonialism with inequality, crassness, and duplicity.
Their experience turned them overtly or covertly against the big
otry and oppressiveness of the colonial regime. They learned
either from first-hand experience or from Marxist theories about
the exploitative nature of the colonial system. Yet they were also
aware that the colonial system had broken down much of the
parochialism of their people and had welded them together in a
self-conscious effort for national freedom. They were also rather
proud of their educational achievements, which had given them a
place in the process of entering the modern world.
My own study was based on library and archival research and
on personal interviews. In observing what colonialism meant to
the group who had become the national leaders, I found that there

13 Brian Harrison, South-East Asia: A Short History (London, 1954), and D. G. E.

Hall, A History of South-East Asia (London, 1955), were the earliest historical sur
veys covering the entire area.
14 Robert Van Niel, The Emergence of the Modern Indonesian Elite (The Hague
and Bandung, i960).

This content downloaded from 202.43.95.72 on Fri, 06 Mar 2020 01:46:35 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
no JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING I99O

was a feeling that even though colonialism was highly unsatisfa

tory and deplorable, it had nonetheless provided a basis for mo
ern nationhood. These people were looking forward to a bett
life in a modern setting.
Clifford Geertz arrived in Java with a team of social scientist
to study the life and activities of the people in a small town in ea
Java. In 1956 in two lengthy mimeographed essays put out by th
Center for International Studies at MIT, he set forth the nucleu
of his argument, which was later elaborated in books that a
peared in the 1960s.15 For background to what he had observed
Geertz used the writings of liberal social scientists and historian
from the 1920s and 1930s who were especially critical of nin
teenth-century colonial activities. He added his own keen observ
tion and Weberian social theories, which had come to be much
fashion. He saw a small town and rural society that had app
ently lost its roots. Its social structure had become homogenized
its economy was impoverished as the population exceeded availa
ble land. There seemed to be no resources for the area to recons
tute itself. The conditions of the time in east Java certainly pr
vided a basis for this dark view, but his observations were abette
by various social theories about the impact of export cultivation
(especially sugar) on the economic and social life of parts of low
land Java, beginning about 1830.
Here thus were two views of the effect of colonialism as seen
from within a southeast Asian society.
These two views of colonialism as seen from within the society
were obviously related to the two different types of history m
tioned earlier. While neither glorified colonialism, each provide
a different view of what colonialism had done and each used a di
ferent combination of methodologies. With all their difference
however, they together provided a starting line for more detai
studies by historians and social scientists that were to follow. A
large and fruitful series of elite and leadership studies came afte
my own endeavors, and a wide variety of village and peasant stu
ies grew out of Geertz's writings. These later studies, in bot
instances, provided the corrections necessary to give southea
Asian history added depth and dimension. In my own case,

15 Clifford Geertz, "The Development of the Javanese Economy: A Socio-Cu

tural Approach," and "The Social Context of Economic Change: An Indonesia
Case Study," (Center for International Studies, MIT, April and July 1956, mim
graphed).

This content downloaded from 202.43.95.72 on Fri, 06 Mar 2020 01:46:35 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Van Niel: Colonialism Revisited 117

became apparent that I had not given sufficient weight to the

influence of traditional culture on the goals and motivations of
the elite and that I had overemphasized the influence of western
ideas and institutions. In Geertz's case it became apparent that
the social distinctions and classes remained, even within the vil
lage, and that these villages had retained more integrity and
coherence than had been assumed.
The level of generalization of historical studies of southeast
Asia during the 1950s and early 1960s was by present-day stan
dards rather unsophisticated. We had all ingested certain social
theories that we tried our best to use, but our data base was really
too restricted for what we were attempting. We were, moreover,
dependent mainly on sources derived out of colonial times and
institutions and probably did not appreciate fully how to evaluate
these. Also, we had little sense of the dynamics of southeast Asian
life, not realizing that these societies were constantly changing?
shrinking or growing?while adjusting to new pressures and seek
ing new directions. During the 1960s as these various shortcom
ings became more evident to those of us working in southeast
Asian studies, we were able to set our graduate students to work
to remedy this situation?a situation, I should add, that was by no
means restricted to views of colonialism but was one that affected
studies of many areas and many different times.16
Almost as if by a given signal, the attention of southeast Asian
studies began to focus on local, institutional, and cultural studies
in order to provide information and insights that were lacking at
the national-level data base. Local studies focused on historical
developments in a district or province, or within an ethno-linguis
tic group. Often beginning as contemporary studies, these local
research endeavors soon were probing the historical backgrounds
and turning up new and exciting information.17 It was frequently

16 C. A. Bayly, "English-Language Historiography on British Expansion in

India and Indian Reactions since 1945," in Reappraisals in Overseas History, ed.
P. C. Emmer and H. L. Wesseling (Leiden, 1979), p. 21, notes that the critical period
of change in the postwar historiography of the British in India came in the years
1958 to 1962. This was roughly the same time as the changes in southeast Asian his
toriography.
17 Examples of local studies are James J. Fox, Harvest of the Palm: Ecological
Change in Eastern Indonesia (Cambridge, Mass., 1977); Christine Dobbin, Islamic
Revivalism in a Changing Peasant Economy: Central Sumatra, 1784-1847 (London,
1983); Karl J. Pelzer, Planter and Peasant: Colonial Policy and the Agrarian Struggle
in East Sumatra 1863-1947 (The Hague, 1978); John A. Larkin, The Pampangans:
Colonial Society in a Philippine Province (Berkeley, 1972).

This content downloaded from 202.43.95.72 on Fri, 06 Mar 2020 01:46:35 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 ii8 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING I99O

seen that what happened during the time of colonialism did not
coincide with the observations or conclusions of the pre-World
War II colonial histories of either the empirical or theoretical
sort. Institutional studies of voluntary organizations, commercial
enterprises, and religious and cultural movements gave a deeper
insight into the expectations of the peoples of the area and also
provided examples of types of leadership and methods of gaining
results.18 Not only did these studies show what was possible in the
southeast Asian social context, but more importantly, they also
showed what was not possible. Cultural studies?an area in which
Ben Anderson of Cornell University has stood at the forefront for
some years?used language, textual analysis, and in-depth prob
ings of culture to show how autochthonous societies' value sys
tems functioned and how they remained oftentimes surprisingly
consistent in the face of change and modernization.19 Through
these local, institutional, and cultural studies, the dynamics of
indigenous societies from the family to the state became better
understood. While much of this work was done by social scien
tists, especially anthropologists, some was also produced by a
growing body of historians. Each discipline has stimulated the
others; and each has used the other's methods and findings.20
These same developments were occurring in other parts of the
world. I cannot forbear from quoting the Cambridge University
historian of India, Chris Bayly, who wrote, "In the mid-1960s histo
rians began to move timorously outside the bounds of the major
cities, only to meet anthropologists moving back into the cities
with the message that village studies were dying/'21 The two met, I
should add, somewhere in this domain that I have characterized

18 Examples of institutional studies are Ruth T. McVey, The Rise of Indonesian

Communism (Ithaca, 1965); David K. Wyatt, The Politics of Reform in Thailand:
Education in the Reign of King Chulalongkorn (New Haven, 1969); Deliar Noer, The
Modernist Muslim Movement in Indonesia 1900-1942 (Singapore, 1973); Akin
Rabibhadana, The Organization of Thai Society in the Early Bangkok Period, 1782
1873 (Ithaca, 1969).
19 Ben Anderson's cultural studies include "The Languages of Indonesian Poli
tics," Indonesia, no. 1 (April 1966), pp. 89-116; "Notes on Contemporary Indonesian
Political Communication," Indonesia, no. 16 (October 1973), pp. 39-80; 'The Idea of
Power in Javanese Culture," in Culture and Politics in Indonesia, ed. Claire Holt
(Ithaca, 1972), pp. 1-69.
20 For further insights in this area, see Shelly Errington, "Some Comments on
Style in the Meanings of the Past," in Perceptions of the Past in Southeast Asia, ed.
Anthony Reid and David Marr (Singapore, 1979), pp. 26-42; and A. C Milner, Kera
jaan: Malay Political Culture on the Eve of Colonial Rule (Tucson, 1982), p. 18.
21 Bayly, "English-Language Historiography," pp. 42-43.

This content downloaded from 202.43.95.72 on Fri, 06 Mar 2020 01:46:35 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Van Niel: Colonialism Revisited 119

as local, institutional, and cultural studies, and from this encoun

ter a most fruitful scholarly tradition has developed.
By now you may be wondering whether I have again drifted off
the subject of colonialism. I would actually like nothing better
than to continue on this present tangent and provide you with
details on some of the many excellent studies that have appeared,
but I will check my enthusiasm and return to our revisitation of
colonialism. Local, institutional, and cultural studies were for the
most part only indirectly related to colonialism, but precisely
because of this indirection they have provided, in the main, a most
salutary antidote to the old tendency of seeing colonialism as the
dynamic force in southeast Asian societies. These studies con
veyed much information about what had happened?on the
ground, so to speak?during the colonial period. Or, to turn the
phrase, what happened domestically under the policies and prac
tices of the colonial regime. If I were forced to generalize about
this, I would say that these studies tend to show colonial impact to
be less devastating than the notions of Marxist-derived exploita
tion and to be less constructive than the enthusiasms of national
colonial historians would have us believe.
There were in the past, and continue to be in the present, great
variations from place to place. One would not expect remote dis
tricts to have their institutions or culture affected to the same
degree as cities or towns or plantation areas. The more remote
areas may have been affected by a consolidation of local political
authority and some stimulation of economic activity, but they
still remained embedded in traditional patterns that seemed to
evolve rather slowly and naturally during the colonial period.
There are no real surprises here. But what about areas that were
more directly involved in the practice and policies of coloni
alism?
The greatest and most immediate impact of colonialism was
certainly in the newly developed urban areas and in those places
where the commercial economy sought to expand export produc
tion of agricultural products and mining. In these areas a restruc
turing of local economies occurred as the capitalist system
brought such places into the world commercial system. The indig
enous trade and labor relationships were altered as subsistence
production gave way to the vagaries of the marketplace. Areas
such as the Irrawaddy Delta in Burma and the plains of central
Luzon in the Philippines were opened to commercial rice and
sugar production with the resultant tenancy and rural indebted

This content downloaded from 202.43.95.72 on Fri, 06 Mar 2020 01:46:35 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
I20 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING I99

ness.22 Other areas such as northeast Sumatra and east J

opened to commercial tobacco, palm oil, and sugar pr
that put extensive pressure on land and labor.23 Urban
both primary and secondary, sprang up to handle the
mercial activities engendered by colonialism. And alm
where the population grew rapidly during the last hund
hundred and fifty years of colonial rule. In this sector o
colonial impact is truly most obvious and most closel
mates the visions we have of social disruption, economic
tion, and human injustice. What can we say about the r
toriography regarding this aspect of colonialism?
The first thing that can be said is that historians and
have not shied away from looking at these matters.
institutional, and cultural studies mentioned before
here, albeit not yet in the quantity that might be hoped
ing first to the commercial agrarian sector, one is f
struck by the migration of large groups of peoples i
opened areas of land in the nineteenth century. Thi
clearly evident in such places as central Luzon and the I
Delta and northeast Sumatra, each of which was a th
lated, swidden area that was suddenly opened to new ag
But the same is true in east Java where settled agricultu
prevailed but where expanding sugar production led to
ulation movements in both agrarian and urban sectors.
of us who had been raised on the notion that the south
peasant was tied to his land and never moved away
graves of his ancestors, both the size and the all-pervas
this migration proved surprising. There were clearly st
work here that were quite unexpected.
A second feature that emerged rather consistently in
torical studies was that some of the indigenous people g
stantially from the expansion of commercial agricultur
others were exploited or came in time to be exploited. O
this differently, the colonial administrations and weste
preneurs worked with or through local power figures a

22 Michael Adas, The Burma Delta: Economic Development and So

on an Asian Rice Frontier, 1852-1941 (Madison, 1974); Benedict J. Ke
Huk Rebellion: A Study of Peasant Revolt in the Philippines (Berkeley, 1
23 Ann Laura Stoler, Capitalism and Confrontation in Sumatra's
Belt, 1870-1979 (New Haven, 1985); R. E. Elson, Javanese Peasants and
Sugar Industry: Impact and Change in an East Java Residency, 1830-
pore, 1984).

This content downloaded from 202.43.95.72 on Fri, 06 Mar 2020 01:46:35 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Van Niel: Colonialism Revisited 121

This observation is certainly not limited to southeast Asia. Robin

son and Brunschwig have observed similar use of local groups of
mediators (as they chose to call them) in imperial expansion in
Africa,24 and the same thing has been observed in India.25 The
expansion of commercial agriculture was not the only area in
which such elites were used by the colonial system, but it was an
area in which immediate and substantial profits and power
accrual fell to such groups. In the already settled regions such as
Java, the gaining of power and influence went as far down into the
society as village headmen and some of the nuclear villagers.26
Clearly, indigenous society was not equally treated by colonial
ism: it had never been an egalitarian society, and it did not
become so under colonialism. But it also was not a passive ele
ment in the process by which colonialism imposed its most pow
erful influences. The same concept is borne out in the question of
land control and aggregation of labor, which under colonialism
came to be tied to legal formulas that lay at the very root of the
economic nexus that made colonialism worth the effort. But the
principles behind this control over land and labor had long been
managed by the indigenous elites through other devices such as
tributes, taxes, and patron-client controls.27
No one can deny that changes occurred in such areas of major
impact under colonialism, but when one sees more clearly how
this took place it is evident that the indigenous society had a
rather active role in making the changes possible and, in many
instances, in working them around to its own advantage.
The commercial urban centers are one of the major legacies of
colonialism.281 suspect that they, along with the phenomenal pop
ulation increase, may, by future historians, be seen as the most
important legacy of colonialism; they will certainly receive in

24 Ronald Robinson, "Non-European Foundations of European Imperialism,"

in Studies in the Theory of Imperialism, ed. R. Owen and B. Sutliffe (London, 1972),
pp. 117-42; Henri Brunschwig, "French Expansion and Local Reactions in Black
Africa in the Time of Imperialism (1880-1914)," in Expansion and Reaction, ed.
H. L. Wesseling (Leiden, 1978), pp. 116-40.
25 Bayly, "English-Language Historiography," pp. 31-32.
26 Van Niel, "The Legacy of the Cultivation System for Subsequent Economic
Development," in Indonesian Economic History of the Dutch Colonial Era, ed.
Anne Booth and William O'Malley (New Haven, 1989).
27 Jan Breman, Control of Land and Labour in Colonial Java (Dordrecht, 1983).
28 G. Balandier, "The Colonial Situation: A Theoretical Approach," in Social
Change: The Colonial Situation, ed. I. Wallerstein (New York, 1966), pp. 34-61, lists
the intrinsic feature of the colonial city.

This content downloaded from 202.43.95.72 on Fri, 06 Mar 2020 01:46:35 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
122 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING 1990

creased attention by researchers.29 The colonial city is a meeting

place of cultures?the epitome of pluralism that loomed so large
in the research of social scientists. It was in the multiethnic envi
ronment of these cities that the modern world came most cogently
to be represented to native society. The culture patterns of the
present-day independent states developed here, blending the tra
ditional and the known with the new and the progressive. The
educational programs of the west, the modernist ideas of Islam
and Buddhism, the foreign influence of Chinese, Indians, Arabs,
and Europeans, lived for the most part in controlled harmony
under colonialism. Yet here arose the nationalist movements that
ultimately supplanted colonialism; and here too the new nations
came to focus plans for their future growth and development.30
With the removal of colonialism, the rules of pluralism were sup
planted by those of nationalism, but this transition has often been
difficult because of the resultant pressures on minorities. It has
been in the urban areas (and perhaps secondly in other areas
of modern economic development) that the newly independent
states have generally found it necessary to revert to patterns of
rigid authoritarian control that remind many persons of colonial
days, but which also could be likened to precolonial patterns of
hierarchy and control.
From what I have said so far, it will be evident that colonialism
as a subject of historical interest has undergone changes in view
point and magnitude. What is lacking in this?though it is cur
rently being rectified?is a sense of the way in which fundamental
beliefs and values in native societies have been affected by colo
nial rule. How much have these societies really changed in their
fundamentals? A solution to this deficiency has begun to emerge
in the past twenty years as historians and anthropologists con
ducting research in the early period?that is, you will recall, up to
the fourteenth century?have given us a heightened understand
ing of how these early societies functioned. This early period in

29 Craig Alan Lockard, From Kampung to City: A Social History of Kuching

Malaysia 1820-1970 (Athens, Ohio, 1987), is a recent urban study. More exciting is
L. Bluss?, "Batavia 1619-1740: The Rise and Fall of a Chinese Colonial Town," chap.
5 in his Strange Company (Dordrecht, 1986).
30 The historical novel in four volumes of Pramoedya Ananta Toer, based on the
life of Tirto Adhi Soeryo, conveys this awakening of national sentiment within the
colonial context. See Bumi Manusia (Jakarta, 1980); Anak Semua Bangsa (Jakarta,
1981); Jejak Langkah (Jakarta, 1986); and Rumah Kaca (Jakarta, 1988).

This content downloaded from 202.43.95.72 on Fri, 06 Mar 2020 01:46:35 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Van Niel: Colonialism Revisited 123

southeast Asian history had been already intensively worked on

by epigraphers, philologists, and historians before World War II,
but the amount of new evidence and hypotheses on this topic
since the late 1960s is absolutely astonishing.31 Kinship, statecraft,
trade, values, and belief patterns have been woven into an image
of early southeast Asian life that is both more complete and more
satisfying now than the picture that existed earlier. As has hap
pened with the modern period, southeast Asian societies have
been moved from passive, almost spineless entities, to dynamic
societies with well-developed social values. The historian's task in
this early period is far from finished, for among other things the
process of change over time must be added to the synchronie con
structs that dominate the current literature. But this will come.
Meanwhile, how does this affect the historical work on coloni
alism? Quite a bit, I would say, for by a greater understanding of
what existed in these societies before colonialism appeared we
are better able to see how and in what ways colonialism affected
them. To a surprising degree it becomes evident that the changes
attributed to colonialism, such as unequal control over the use of
land, coerced labor, unequal taxation, group migrations, paternal
ism, hierarchical bureaucracies, insecurity of personal posses
sions, and limitations on human freedom, all existed to a greater
or lesser degree in these societies before colonialism entered the
scene. Colonialism raised the ante. It pulled some of these prob
lems out of context and in some places abused them, but the
essence of what colonialism was about was already to some
degree familiar to the societies that had learned to live with and
adapt to these pressures. In most instances, colonialism?despite
its rhetoric to the contrary?did not eliminate earlier patterns of
inequity, corruption, and arbitrariness; it simply used them to
gain its ends. As the historical insights into the colonial period
gain in depth and understanding, it becomes increasingly evident,
as such techniques as textual analysis, demographic regressions,
and deconstruction of value and authority patterns are applied,
that many of the fundamentals of these societies are constant
over centuries of time. This is in no way meant to deny change
either under colonialism or under postcolonialism, but it is meant

31 Jan Wisseman Christie, "Negara, M?ndala, and Despotic State: Images of

Early Java," in Southeast Asia in the 9th to 14th Centuries, ed. David G. Marr and
A. C Milner (Singapore, 1986), pp. 65 ff.

This content downloaded from 202.43.95.72 on Fri, 06 Mar 2020 01:46:35 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 I24 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING I99O

to suggest that those changes that have occurred must increas

ingly be seen in the perspective of the histories of the authoctho
nous societies.
If I have disappointed you by not saying much about current
notions such as neocolonialism, moral economy, the modern
world system, and dependency?all of which bear in some way on
colonialism?I must confess that while I find them stimulating to
contemplate, I do not find them particularly applicable to pres
ent-day conditions in southeast Asia; and I find them of even less
use to the historian trying to explore the colonial past of the
newly independent countries.32
I hope that what I have told you about colonialism will have
stimulated your thinking on this subject.

32 At the root of this matter is the point made by Georg Luk?cs in "Rosa Lux
embourg, Marxiste," in Histoire et conscience de classe (Paris, i960), to the effect
that the chief distinction between Marxism and bourgeois science is the point of
view of the totality. In Marxism the totality of whole is the determining element in
all domains over the parts. This is basic to the thinking of I. Wallerstein, around
whose modern world system the other ideas rotate. See also Kwame Nkrumah,
Neo-Colonialism: The Last State of Imperialism (New York, 1966); Smith, The Pat
tern of Imperialism, pp. 68-72; Jan N. Pieterse, "A Critique of World System The
ory," Kajian Malaysia 5 (1987): 1-42; and von Albertini, "Colonialism and Underde
velopment" (n. 11 above), pp. 43-44.

This content downloaded from 202.43.95.72 on Fri, 06 Mar 2020 01:46:35 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms