Book Reviews

Being too much concerned with elaborating his as Professor Skinner has demonstrated mistaken views about peranakan and singkeh, Dr. Williams completely forgets to say that the Chinese group, beside the ubiquitous traders, counted among its members e.g. a few large landowners on Java (occupants of the "particuliere landerijen" or private estates, granted before the land-act of 1870), independent agriculturalists in Western Borneo, coolies in the tin-islands of Bangka and Billiton (or Belitung) and on the tobacco plantations of Deli in Northern Sumatra, coolies again, but this time engaged by Chinese entrepreneurs, in the forest exploitations in Eastern Sumatra, the so-called pang long, etc, etc. Quite apart from the disfavour with which they, as representatives of a colonial power in those days, looked upon nationalist movements, they could not fail to be alarmed by attempts which aimed at losening the ties between the conglomerate population of Indonesia as a whole and one of its constituent parts, attempts which moreover tended to strengthen the dormant alien character of this part and to bring it within the sphere of influence of another nation! [...]the introduction of the new nationality legislation of 1910, which made every person born in the Netherlands Indies a Netherlands subject; in this way it was expected to tie a large part of the Chinese population more closely to the Indies. [...]the establishment of the Dutch-Chinese schools, where Chinese language lessons were wittingly omitted from the curriculum, fout where other courses were offered, with the same purpose of reinforcing local, not alien, ties.