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The Invisible Economy: Javanese Commerce in the Late Colonial State
Author(s) -
Alexander Jennifer,
Alexander Paul
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
the australian journal of anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.245
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1757-6547
pISSN - 1035-8811
DOI - 10.1111/j.1835-9310.1990.tb00005.x
Subject(s) - subsistence agriculture , capitalism , colonialism , commodity , indigenous , state (computer science) , capital (architecture) , economy , economics , agriculture , production (economics) , subsistence economy , market economy , political science , geography , history , ancient history , ecology , macroeconomics , archaeology , algorithm , politics , computer science , law , biology
Javanese economic history is conventionally represented as an involutionary process in which rural Javanese, protected from the deleterious effects of capitalism by the colonial State, intensified subsistence agriculture to provide each household with a meagre living. This study challenges the conventional interpretation in two respects. Firstly it demonstrates that before the Dutch established economic control and again around 1900, trade and petty commodity production were significant sectors of the indigenous economy producing perhaps thirty percent of rural income. Secondly, it argues that the inability of Javanese traders to compete with Chinese wholesalers was not due to a lack of commercial acumen but to State policies which inhibited capital accumulation and made credit prohibitively expensive.