Suchergebnisse

Introduction: From the Mundane to the Sublime : Science, Empire, and the Enlightenment, 1760s-1820s / Peter Boomgaard -- Science and the Colonial War-State : British India, 1790-1820 / David Arnold -- Collecting and the Pursuit of Scientific Accuracy : The Malaspina Expedition in the Philippines, 1792 / Raquel Reyes -- Empire without Science? : The Dutch Scholarly World and Colonial Science around 1800 / Klaas van Berkel -- Why Was There no Javanese Galileo? / Gerry van Klinken -- For the Common Good : Dutch Institutions and Western Scholarship on Indonesia around 1800 / Peter Boomgaard -- "A Religion that is Extremely Easy and Unusually Light to Take On" : Dutch and English Knowledge of Southeast Asian Islam, ca. 1595-1811 / Michael Laffan -- A National Obligation : Archaeological Research and Regime Change in Java and the Netherlands in the Early Nineteenth Century / Marieke Bloembergen and Martijn Eickhoff -- Meeting Point Deshima : Scholarly Communication between Japan and Europe to around 1800 / Peter Rietbergen -- The First Dutch Ethnographic Monograph : De Kaffers aan de Zuidkust van Afrika (1810) by Lodewyk Alberti / Siegfried Huigen -- Intellectual Wastelands? : Scholarship in and for the Dutch West Indies up to ca. 1800 / Gert Oostindie

Abstract
This article has two basic aims. First, I discuss several notions regarding long-term changes in land-tenure arrangements, mainly in what is now Indonesia. I argue that the character of these changes is often badly understood, partly because the older literature has been misrepresented, partly because the older literature was wrong, and partly because many scholars implicitly or explicitly appear to believe in "stages theories" (best known among scholars under the German term Stufentheorie), which posit fairly uniform and unidirectional stages of land-tenure development across the board. Second, this article deals with environmental causes and effects of long-term land-tenure developments in the Indonesian Archipelago.
Land tenure and conservation are hotly debated at present, but the historical substance in such debates is meagre, usually going back no further than the 1950s or 60s. Nor does there seem to be much interest in the environmental roots of land-tenure arrangements, perhaps because the participants in the land-tenure-and-the-environment debate are mainly anthropologists and environmentalists, who might find such topics of antiquarian importance only. As an historian I cannot share this view.

ABSTRACTFactor markets of sorts did exist in the more highly developed areas of early modern Southeast Asia, and they became more efficient in the course of time (although not in a linear process). However, in other more remote areas land was hardly ever sold, labour could not be hired and money was rare. Neither was the institutional framework conducive to economic growth, mainly because the rule of law did not apply where the ruler was concerned. This state of affairs goes a long way to explain why levels of economic growth were lower in Southeast Asia than they were in Western Europe at the same time.

Water, in its many guises, has always played a powerful role in shaping Southeast Asian histories, cultures, societies and economies. This volume, the rewritten results of an international workshop, with participants from eight countries, contains thirteen essays, representing a broad range of approaches to the study of Southeast Asia with water as the central theme. As it was exposed to the sea, the region was more accessible to outside political, economic and cultural influences than many landlocked areas. Easy access through sea routes also stimulated trade from an early age. However, the same easy access made Southeast Asia vulnerable to political control by strong outsiders. The sea is, moreover, a source of food, but also of many hazards. At the same time, Southeast Asian societies and cultures are confronted with and permeated by 'water from heaven' in the form of rain, flash floods, irrigation water, water in rivers, brooks and swaps, water-driven power plants, and pumped or piped water, in addition to water as a carrier of sewage and pollution. Finally, the volume deals with the role of water in classification systems, beliefs, myths, illness and healing.

This paper dexamines the history of sexually transmitted diseases in Southeast Asia and explores the origins of venereal disease, specifically syphilis and gonorrhoea, in the region. The arrival of new diseases that accompanied Europeans from about 1500, is a subject that scholars have largely ignored in favour of the 19th and 20th centuries. While concentrating on the Indonesian archipelago, the paper also considers to other parts of Southeast Asia to investigate the impact of syphilis and gonorrhoea on the rate of population growth in the region. Unlike gonorrhoea, which was present before the arrival of Europeans, syphilis was a new disease whose introduction by the Portuguese had lethal consequences. Possibly, the propagation of Islam and Christianity in island Southeast Asia after 1500 and of Buddhism in mainland Southeast Asia, were important mitigating factors in checking the spread of syphilis.