The exceptional commercial success of many Southeast Asians of Chinese origin has generated much contemporary debate about the cultural or social basis of that success. This book shows that those questions have long roots in Indonesia. Dutch colonial officials in the nineteenth century expressed...

The creation of a system -- The functioning of a system -- A local-level analysis of an opium district : Saran -- The costs and benefits of poppy cultivation -- The mechanics of a system : incentives, coercion and dependence.