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Summary:

"Sugar, Steam and Steel is about cane sugar and the transformation of an Indonesian island into the 'Oriental Cuba' during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Between the 1830s and the 1880s, sweetener manufacture in Dutch-controlled Java - the crown jewel of the erstwhile Netherlands Indies - drew decisively away in matters of technology and sugar science from other Asian centres of production which had once equaled or, more often, surpassed it in terms of both output and know-how. Along with its larger and altogether more famous Caribbean counterpart, Java's industry came to occupy a position at the apex of the trade in what had become by this date a key global commodity. Along with the beet sugar producers of (post-1870) Imperial Germany, Cuba and Java accounted for a little over one-third of the world's recorded output of the industrially manufactured kind of sugar usually referred to as 'centrifugal'. While Cuba held the position of the world's largest supplier of cane sugar to international commodity markets, 'Dutch' Java emerged from almost nowhere to take second place. The island had begun the nineteenth century as one of a number of centres - in fact, a rather minor one - of pre-industrial sugar production located in tropical and sub-tropical Asia from the Indian sub-continent through to the southernmost islands of Japan. It ended the century not only as by far the largest of Asia's producer-exporters of sugar but also - critically - as the sole example of the sustained and successful large-scale industrialisation of sugar manufacture anywhere in 'the East'. Sugar, Steam and Steel sets out to explain how and why this happened - and what its implications were for the long-term trajectory of the Java sugar industry in the international sugar economy."--Cover description.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction. Java sugar, an industrial project and the "Oriental Cuba", 1830-85
• Part I. The "industrial revolution" in sugar manufacture
• 1. Java's singular trajectory : steam, steel and the industrial project in sugar
• 2. A Creole Prometheus : steam, paddle boats and sugar factories
• 3. The industrial sugar factory : Wonopringgo, Thomas Edwards and the Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij (NHM)
• Part II. The "peasant" economy, the money trail and the bourgeoisie
• 4. Sugar without slaves : the agrarian bases for the industrial project
• 5. The money trail : state, suikerlords and bourgeoisie
• Part III. Metamorphosis
• 6. Metamorphosis : machinery, science and the manufacture of sugar in Java on the eve of the crisis of the mid-1880s
• Conclusion. The future of an industrial project : the 1880s and beyond.

Author/Creator:

Knight, G. R. , author

Languages:

English

Language Notes:

English.

Main Work:

Sugar, steam and steel: the industrial project in colonial Java, 1830-1885 [by Knight, G.R.]

Other Related Resources:

Print version: Sugar, steam and steel [by Knight, G.R.] (ISBN 9781922064981; LCCN 2015375245; OCLC Number 910270938)

Related Series:

Open Access e-Books

Knowledge Unlatched

Subjects:

Sugar — Manufacture and refining — Indonesia — Java — History

Sugar trade — Indonesia — Java — History

Java (Indonesia) — History — 19th century

Netherlands — Colonies — Commerce — Asia — History

1800-1899

Sugar

Sugar trade

Netherlandish colonies

Commerce

Sugar — Manufacture and refining

Indonesia — Java

Asia

Netherlands

Genres:

History

General Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 225-242).
Description based on: Print version record.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 242 pages) : illustrations (some colour).

Digital Characteristics:

text file

Call Numbers:

TP379.J4 K554 2014eb

ISBNs:

1922064998 (electronic bk.)
9781922064998 (electronic bk.)
9781925261004 [Invalid]
192526100X [Invalid]
9781922064981 (pbk.) [Invalid]
192206498X (pbk.) [Invalid]
9781922064988 [Invalid]

Library of Congress Control Numbers:

2015375245

OCLC Numbers:

908281606