Ulbe Bosma

In The Making of a Periphery, Ulbe Bosma draws on new archival sources from the colonial period to the present to demonstrate how high demographic growth and a long history of bonded labor relegated Southeast Asia to the margins of the global economy. Meer

European markets almost exclusively relied on Caribbean sugar produced by slave labor until abolitionist campaigns began around 1800. Thereafter, importing Asian sugar and transferring plantation production to Asia became a serious option for the Western world. Meer

Sugar was the single most valuable bulk commodity traded internationally before oil became the world’s prime resource. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, cane sugar production was pre-eminent in the Atlantic Islands, the Caribbean, and Brazil. Meer

This book examines the role of mercantile networks in linking Asian economies to the global economy. It contains fourteen contributions on East, Southeast and South Asia covering the period from 1750 to the present. Meer