Paper Landscapes

Too much of what has so far passed for the ‘historical background’ to Indonesia’s environmental problems has consisted of little more than thinly disguised backward projections of modern trends. The writers in this volume report on their own pioneer journeys into the paper landscapes of the colonial literature and archives in search of the real environmental history of Indonesia. CONTENTS Peter Boomgaard: Introducing environmental histories of Indonesia/ Harold Brookfield: Land degradation in the Indonesian region, interpreted as landscape history/ Anthony Reid: Inside-out: The colonial displacement of Sumatra’s population/ David Henley: Carrying capacity, climatic variation and the problem of low population growth among Indonesian swidden farmers; Evidence from North Sulawesi/ Han Knapen: Epidemics, drought and other uncertainties in Southeast Borneo during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries/ J.W. Nibbering: Upland cultivation and soil conservation in limestone regions on Java’s south coast; Three historical case studies/ Peter Boomgaard: Hunting and trapping in the Indonesian Archipelago, 1500-1950/ J. Kathirithamby-Wells: Human impact on large mammal populations in peninsular Malaya, nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries/ Masyhuri: Fishing industry and environment off the north coast of Java, 1850-1900/ Bernice de Jong Boers: Sustainability and time perspective in natural resource management; The exploitation of sappan trees in the forests of Sumbawa, Indonesia, 1500-1875/ Lesley M. Potter: A forest product out of control; Gutta percha in Indonesia and the wider Malay world, 1845-1915/ Freek Colombijn: The ecological sustainability of frontier societies in eastern Sumatra/ Michael Dove: The political ecology of pepper in the Hikayat Banjar; The historiography of commodity production in a Bornean kingdom/ Robert Cribb: Birds of paradise and environmental politics in colonial Indonesia, 1895-1931.