Capitalism and Confrontation in Sumatra’s Plantation Belt, 1870-1979

Over the last century, North Sumatra has been the site of one of the most intensive and successful pursuits of foreign agricultural enterprise of any developing country. Colonial expansion by Europeans resulted in overt–sometimes violent– conflict between capital and labor, as workers resisted plantation interests. Capitalism and Confrontation in Sumatra’s Plantation Belt, 1870-1979 is a fascinating ethnographic history that analyzes how popular resistance actively molded both the form of colonialism and the social, economic, and political experience of the Javanese laboring communities on Sumatra’s plantation borders.