For a long time, Europe's colonizing powers justified their urge for expansion with the conviction that they were 'bringing civilization to territories where civilization was lacking.' This doctrine of white superiority and indigenous inferiority was accompanied by a boundless exploitation of local labor. Under colonial rule, the ideology that later became known as neoliberalism was free to subject labor to a capitalism tainted by racialized policies. This political economy has now become dominant in the Western world, too, and has reversed the trend towards equality. In Colonialism, Capitalism and Racism, Jan Breman shows how racial favoritism is no longer contained to 'faraway, indigenous peoples,' but has become a source of polarization within Western societies as well.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.
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Jan Breman takes dispossession as his central theme in this ambitious analysis of labour bondage in India's changing political economy from 1962 to 2017. When, in a remote past, tribal and low-caste communities were attached to landowning households, their lack of freedom was framed as subsistence-oriented dependency. Breman argues that with colonial rule came the intrusion of capitalism into India's agrarian economy, leading to a decline in the idea of patronage in the relationship between bonded labour and landowner. Instead, servitude was reshaped as indebtedness. As labour became transformed into a commodity, peasant workers were increasingly pushed out of agriculture and the village but remained adrift in the wider economy. This footloose workforce is subjected to exploitation when their labour power is required and is left in a state of exclusion when it is surplus to demand. The outcome is progressive inequality that is thoroughly capitalist in nature.
Pauperism and pauperization are two of the most persistent and widespread phenomena in India. While a fierce debate rages on the line separating the poor from the non-poor, there is scant discussion on the huge mass of paupers - not less than one-fifth of the countrys population - living in destitution. Rural and urban case studies conducted in the state of Gujarat highlight the ordeal of these paupers, the non-labouring poor unable to take care of themselves, the migrant labour driven away from the village and back for lack of work, and an urban underclass redundant to demand, often experienced by the better-off as a nuisance.
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Coffee has been grown on Java for the commercial market since the early eighteenth century, when the Dutch East India Company began buying from peasant producers in the Priangan highlands. What began as a commercial transaction, however, soon became a system of compulsory production. This book shows how the Dutch East India Company mobilised land and labour, why they turned to force cultivation, and what effects the brutal system they installed had on the economy and society.
History, geography, and auxiliary disciplines - In een historisch onderzoek dat een herziening is van de koloniale geschiedschrijving, duikt prof. dr. Jan Breman in een van de zwartste bladzijdes van de Nederlandse geschiedenis. In Koloniaal profijt van onvrije arbeid: het Preanger stelsel van gedwongen koffieteelt op Java, dat meer dan dertig jaar onderzoek omspant, behandelt hij de werking en uitwerking van gedwongen koffieteelt onder de koloniale heerschappij, en de invloed op het maatschappelijk bestel in de hooglanden van West-Java. Hij laat zien hoe de VOC de inheemse landadel inschakelde als goedkope vorm van bestuur. Deze landadel hield de boerenbevolking door middel van uitbuiting en onderdrukking in het gareel. Het Preanger koffieregime werd vanaf 1830 voortgezet in de vorm van het cultuurstelsel. Dwang was inherent aan dit stelsel waarbij de boeren niet alleen verplicht waren om de voorgeschreven arbeidsprestatie te leveren, maar ook om de eenzijdig vastgestelde vergoeding voor de producten zonder protest te aanvaarden. Dat deze opzet succes behaalde beschrijft Multatuli in zijn Max Havelaar. Breman levert met deze studie de feitelijke onderbouwing van de aanklacht door Multatuli, anderhalve eeuw geleden. Hoe komt het dat de werking en uitwerking van het Preanger-stelsel van gedwongen koffieteelt zo lang buiten beeld is gebleven? Breman plaatst scherpe kanttekeningen bij de uitgesproken gunstige oordelen die worden geveld in de koloniale geschiedschrijving. De toon van zelfrechtvaardiging en stilzwijgen over het gebruik van dwangarbeid waarin de koloniale overheid uitblonk, is volgens Breman een opvallend element in de verdediging van de tot nu toe gevoerde politiek. Deze studie kan beschouwd worden als een herziening van de geschiedschrijving én als een sociaalwetenschappelijke verhandeling van Multatuli's werk.
Papers presented at the Workshop: Labour in South Asia : Labour Relationships, Identities and Bondage , held at Pondicherry during 7-9 February 2006 and Workshop: Debt Bondage : Issues and Perspectives, held at New Delhi during 19-20 April 2007
