Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2010
The project about the maritime history of the Java Sea, in which various scholars from Indonesia and the Netherlands have been participating since about 1996, bears the title ‘The Java Sea Region in an Age of Transition, 1870–1970’. From the beginning of the project there has been discussion about the time-span to be covered by the project, especially about the terminal year. Some people feared that the availability of sources would limit the prospects of fruitful research. On the basis of this, it was even proposed to stop at 1945, the date of Indonesia's independence. However, in the end most of the scholars involved agreed that it would be worthwhile to continue to roughly 1970, because then it would be possible to include the first years of the Orde Baru regime and pinpoint its effects on the rehabilitation of ports. Moreover, 1970 was also convenient for the simple reason that it was one hundred years after the year, taken as the starting point, namely 1870. The year 1870 as a point of departure was never the subject of any discussion. Because of the liberalization of the economy, namely the general shift from exploitation by the colonial state to exploitation by private enterprise and the alleged beginning of the so-called Age of Modern Imperialism, which tied the corners of the Archipelago closer together, it was simply accepted. Within the confines of the maritime sector, 1870 was assumed to symbolize the change from wind energy to steam power and a beginning of the improvement of ports. Confidently, the opening up of the Suez Canal in 1869 heralded an intensification of contacts between the Netherlands and the Netherlands Indies.
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.