1 Bacon, Francis, ‘Of plantations’, in The essayes or counsels civill and morall of Francis Bacon, ed. Kiernan, Michael (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985 [1625]), p. 106Google Scholar.

2 Reid, Anthony, ‘Introduction: Slavery and bondage in Southeast Asian history’, in Slavery, bondage and dependency in Southeast Asia, ed. Reid, Anthony (St Lucia, Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1983), pp. 22, 18Google Scholar.

3 Ibid., p. 23.

4 Campbell, Gwyn and Alpers, Edward A., ‘Introduction: Slavery, forced labour and resistance in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia’, Slavery and Abolition, 25, 5 (2004)Google Scholar: ix. See also Reid, ‘Introduction’, p. 14.

5 Loth, Vincent C., ‘Pioneers and perkeniers: The Banda Islands in the 17th century’, Cakalele, 6 (1995): 9Google Scholar.

6 Reid, ‘Introduction’, p. 14.

7 Shlomowitz, Ralph, ‘Slave trade: Asia and Oceania’, in A historical guide to world slavery, ed. Drescher, Seymour and Engerman, Stanley L. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 362Google Scholar. Shlomowitz identifies just three examples, including that of the Banda Islands.

8 For example, Masselman, George, The cradle of colonialism (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1963), p. 422Google Scholar, writes: ‘denuded of its population, the Banda Islands became virgin territory which the Company could now exploit as it wished’.

9 Lasker, Bruno, Human bondage in Southeast Asia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1950), pp. 34, 75Google Scholar.

10 For more detail concerning these activities, see Winn, Phillip, ‘Tanah berkat (blessed land) and the source of the local in the Banda Islands, central Maluku’, in Sharing the earth, dividing the land. Land and territory in the Austronesian world, ed. Reuter, Thomas (Canberra: Comparative Austronesia Series, ANU E Press, 2006), pp. 61–81Google Scholar.

11 Loth, ‘Pioneers and perkeniers’, p. 18; Hanna, Willard A., Indonesia Banda: Colonialism and its aftermath in the Nutmeg Islands (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1978), p. 55Google Scholar. It remains unclear what proportion of this pre-conquest estimate of population were periodically resident traders or in-migrants. The total number of Bandanese killed or forcibly expelled or who fled the islands as a result of the VOC conquest remains uncertain; numbers of people are also reported as dying from starvation, exposure and disease in the conquest's immediate aftermath.

12 Bieber, Judy, ‘Introduction’, in Plantation societies in the era of European expansion, ed. Bieber, Judy (Hampshire, UK: Variorum, 1997), p. xviGoogle Scholar.

13 Klein, Herbert S., The Atlantic slave trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 14Google Scholar.

14 Sidney W. Mintz, ‘Was the plantation slave a proletarian?’, in Plantation societies, ed. Bieber, p. 309.

15 Klein, Atlantic slave trade, p. 15.

16 Bieber, ‘Introduction’, p. xiii.

17 Gordon, Alec, ‘Towards a model of plantation systems’, Journal of Contemporary Asia (henceforth, JCA), 31, 3 (2001): 313Google Scholar.

18 Hanna, Indonesia Banda, p. 55; Loth, ‘Pioneers and perkeniers’, pp. 18–19, 24.

19 Hanna, Indonesia Banda, p. 66. Hanna cites the journal observations of a German named Wurffbain in the employ of the VOC, who records 560 ‘native Bandanese’ in the islands, roughly equivalent numbers enslaved and free. The Bandanese slaves comprised 53 men, 158 women, and 69 children; the free Bandanese comprised 50 men, 133 women, and 97 children. A total of 1,919 non-Bandanese slaves are recorded, consisting of 782 men, 732 women and 405 children.

20 Lasker, Human bondage, p. 75.

21 Masselman, Cradle of colonialism, p. 416.

22 Ibid., p. 312; Meilink-Roelofsz, M.A.P., Asian trade and European influence in the Indonesian Archipelago between 1500 and about 1630 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), pp. 228–9Google Scholar.

23 Ellen, Roy, On the edge of the Banda zone. Past and present in the social organisation of a Moluccan trading network (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2003), pp. 54–7Google Scholar.

24 Ibid., p. 88.

25 James J. Fox, ‘“For good and sufficient reasons”: An examination of early Dutch East India Company ordinances on slaves and slavery’, in Slavery, bondage and dependency in Southeast Asia, ed. Reid, p. 250.

26 Andaya, Leonard, ‘Local trade networks in Maluku in the 16th, 17th and 18th century’, Cakalele, 2, 2 (1991): 73Google Scholar.

27 Riedel, J.G.F., De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes an Papua (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1886), p. 462Google Scholar.

28 Ellen, On the edge, pp. 101–2; Alfons van der Kraan, ‘Bali: Slavery and slave trade’, in Reid, ed., Slavery, bondage and dependency in Southeast Asia, p. 327; Hanna, Indonesia Banda, pp. 62–3.

29 See Reid ‘Introduction’, pp. 30–3; also Wright, H.R.C., ‘The Moluccan spice monopoly, 1770–1824’, Journal of the Malayan Branch Royal Asiatic Society, 31, 4 (1958): 18, 47Google Scholar.

30 Loth, Vincent C., ‘Fragrant gold and food provision: resource management and agriculture in seventeenth century Banda’, in Old World places, New World problems. Exploring resource management issues in Eastern Indonesia, ed. Pannell, Sandra and Benda-Beckmann, Franz von (Canberra: Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies / Australian National University, 1998), pp. 67–71, 87Google Scholar.

31 Ibid., p. 87.

32 Ibid., p. 75.

33 Loth, ‘Pioneers and perkeniers’, p. 28.

34 Miller, W.G., ‘An account of trade patterns in the Banda Sea in 1707, from an unpublished manuscript in the India Office library’, Indonesia Circle, 23 (1980): 44Google Scholar.

35 Reid, ‘Introduction’, p. 22.

36 Knaap, Gerrit J., ‘A city of migrants: Kota Ambon at the end of the seventeenth century’, Indonesia, 51 (1991): 112Google Scholar. Ambon town was a major centre of VOC operations close to the Banda Islands; the most regular and substantial growth of the mardijker population in this settlement consisted of freed slaves of Makassarese, Butonese, Buginese and Balinese origins.

37 Hanna, Indonesia Banda, p. 66.

38 Wright, ‘Moluccan spice monopoly’, p. 18. This figure comprised 1,826 men, 1,760 women and 526 children. Similar numbers are reported around the same period by Heeres, J.E., ‘Eene Engelsche lezig omtrent de verovering van Banda en Ambon in 1796 en omtrent den Toestand dier eilanden groepen op het eind der achttiende eeuw’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 17 (1914): 354Google Scholar, as follows: 4,387 slaves in a total population of 5,763 people; that is, slaves equated to some 76% of the population.

39 Reid, ‘Introduction’, p. 23.

40 See for example: Gordon, Alec, ‘Towards a model of plantation systems’, JCA, 31, 3 (2001)Google Scholar, and ‘Plantation colonialism, capitalism and critics’, JCA, 30, 4 (2000).

41 Reid, ‘Introduction’, p. 22; Reid, Anthony, Southeast Asia in the age of commerce 1450–1680. Vol 1 The lands below the winds (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988), pp. 134–5Google Scholar.

42 Reid, ‘Introduction’, p. 22.

43 Waal, V.I.Van de, ‘Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis der perkeniers 1621–1671’, Overgedrukt uit het Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, LXXIV (1934): 522Google Scholar; Meilink-Roelofsz, Asian trade, pp. 227–38.

44 Van de Waal, ‘Bijdrage’, p. 524.

45 Hanna, Indonesia Banda, p. 64.

46 Wright, ‘Moluccan spice monopoly’, pp. 18, 94.

47 Heeres, ‘Eene Engelsche lezig omtrent’, p. 353.

48 Wright, ‘Moluccan spice monopoly’, p. 17.

49 Ibid., p. 76.

50 Hanna, Indonesia Banda, p. 81. The adequacy of Company provisions was a regular source of friction between perkeniers and the VOC administration, with perkeniers at times substituting locally imported sago for the Company-supplied allowance of rice designated for perken slaves.

51 Heeres, ‘Eene Engelsche lezig omtrent’, p. 308. The assertion that perken slaves may have been granted certain privileges in the nutmeg groves in relation to ‘kanary nuts’ is interesting. The term ‘cultivate’ seems misapplied here; unlike the other items mentioned, these nuts (known as kenari) are produced by tall forest trees that form an integral part of the canopy protecting the nutmeg groves. Any privilege likely concerns the gathering of these oil-rich edible nuts. Village communities in the islands today strongly assert a local right to gather the fallen nuts of kenari trees, which continue to form a key component of the now almost wholly state-owned nutmeg groves, see Winn, Phillip, ‘“Everyone searches, everyone finds”: Moral discourse and resource in use in an Indonesian Muslim community’, Oceania, 72, 4 (2002): 275–93Google Scholar. Heeres may offer evidence for the existence of such a right in the 18th century, though it remains unclear whether this applied to perken slaves exclusively or extended also to local villagers.

52 Mintz, ‘Was the plantation slave’, pp. 317–18. In a Caribbean context, similar activities were part of a formalised system of ‘provision grounds’, see Verene A. Shepherd, ‘Caribbean Agriculture’, in A historical guide to world slavery, ed. Drescher and Engerman, p. 118, who observes that despite being essentially a cost-saving measure, gardening also diluted the power of slave-owners as it limited the extent to which food could be used as a means of control. Caribbean slaves engaged in organised protests in the face of attempts to reduce access to provision grounds or to place limits on the range of marketing activities associated with their own cultivation efforts.

53 Wright, ‘Moluccan spice monopoly’, p. 18.

54 Heeres, ‘Eene Engelsche lezig omtrent’, pp. 348–9.

55 Hanna, Indonesia Banda, p. 81. Neira is the name of the largest settlement in the islands and the location of its administrative centre; the island on which it is located is also known also as Neira and as Banda Neira. Perkeniers generally maintained residences on this island.

56 JGoody, ack, ‘Slavery in time and place’, in Asian and African systems of slavery, ed. Watson, James L. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980), pp. 35–6Google Scholar.

57 Ellen, On the edge, pp. 4–10; Meilink-Roelofsz, , Asian trade and European influence in the Indonesian Archipelago between 1500 and about 1630 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), pp. 95–6Google Scholar.

58 Ibid., p. 85.

59 Miller, ‘Account of trade patterns’, pp. 42–4.

60 Quoted in Hanna, Indonesia Banda, p. 75.

61 Wright, ‘Moluccan spice monopoly’, p. 1; Miller, ‘An account of trade patterns’, pp. 42–4.

62 Heeres, ‘Eene Engelsche lezig omtrent’, p. 355.

63 Wright, ‘Moluccan spice monopoly’, p. 18.

64 Heeres, ‘Eene Engelsche lezig omtrent’, p. 349; the term boscwagter is clearly a rendering of the Dutch boschwachter, i.e. ‘forester’.

65 Ibid., p. 355.

66 Ellen, On the edge, p. 83.

67 Quoted in Hanna, Indonesia Banda, p. 75.

68 Ellen, On the edge, p. 86.

69 Campbell and Alpers, ‘Introduction’, p. xii.

70 Hanna, Indonesia Banda, p. 79.

71 Ibid., p. 80.

72 Reid, ‘Introduction’, p. 17.

73 Ibid., p. 17.

74 Van de Waal, ‘Bijdrage’, p. 531.

75 Hanna, Indonesia Banda, p. 62.

76 Heeres, ‘Eene Engelsche lezig omtrent’, p. 354. See also Hanna pp. 93–4, and Wright, ‘Moluccan spice monopoly’, pp. 19, 45.

77 Hanna, Indonesia Banda, p. 70.

78 Heeres, ‘Eene Engelsche lezig omtrent’, pp. 324–5.

79 Hanna, Indonesia Banda, pp. 63–4.

80 Heeres, ‘Eene Engelsche lezig omtrent’, pp. 324–5.

81 Fox, ‘For good and sufficient reasons’, p. 255.

82 Ibid.

83 Reid, ‘Introduction’, p. 26.

84 Campbell and Alpers, ‘Introduction’, pp. xi, xii.

85 Reid, ‘Introduction’, p. 25.

86 Jones, Eric A., ‘Fugitive women: Slavery and social change in early modern Southeast Asia’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (henceforth, JSEAS), 38, 2 (2007): 224Google Scholar.

87 Campbell and Alpers, ‘Introduction’, p. xviii.

88 Lasker, Human bondage, p. 34.

89 Hanna, Indonesia Banda, pp. 63–4.

90 Knaap, ‘City of migrants’, pp. 11, 127.

91 Stoler, Anne, Carnal knowledge and imperial power: Race and the intimate in colonial rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), p. 80Google Scholar. See also Milone, Pauline Dublin, ‘Indische culture, and its relation to urban life’, Comparative studies in Society and History, 9, 4 (1967): 407Google Scholar.

92 See for example, Kroef, Justus M. Van der, ‘The Eurasian minority in Indonesia’, American Sociological Review, 18, 5 (1953): 485Google Scholar. In some contexts, the ‘admixture of European blood’ could be considered as ‘elevating and improving’; see McGilvray, Dennis B., ‘Dutch burghers and Portuguese mechanics: Eurasian ethnicity in Sri Lanka’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 24, 2 (1982): 237–8Google Scholar. In the Dutch Indies, such processes came to be viewed rather as a threatening subversion of white prestige and as embodying the dangers of European degeneration and moral decay; see Stoler, Carnal knowledge, p. 80.

93 Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko, ‘Always discontinuous / continuous, and “hybrid” by its very nature: The culture concept historicized’, Ethnohistory, 52, 1 (2005): 190Google Scholar.

94 Sahlins, Marshall, ‘Preface’, Ethnohistory, 52, 1 (2005): 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

95 Campbell and Alpers, ‘Introduction’, pp. xiii–xiv.

96 See Prentice, D.J., ‘The best chosen language I & II’, Hemisphere, 22, 3 (1978): 18–23Google Scholar, and Collins, James T., Malay, world language: A short history (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1998): 14Google Scholar.

97 Villiers, John, ‘The cash-crop economy and state formation in the spice islands in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries’, in The Southeast Asian port and polity: rise and demise, ed. Kathirithamby-Wells, Jeyamalar and Villiers, John (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1990), p. 96Google Scholar.

98 Grimes, Barbara, ‘The development and use of Ambonese Malay’, Pacific Linguistics, A-81 (1991): 116Google Scholar.

99 Ibid.

100 Groenboer, Kees, ‘The Dutch language in Maluku under the VOC’, Cakalele, 5 (1994): 7Google Scholar.

101 Ibid., pp. 7–9.

102 Ibid.

103 Chijs, J.A. van der ‘Banda's Veroverings-Dag’, Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 26 (1880): 3Google Scholar.

104 Groenboer, ‘Dutch language’, p. 8.

105 Huet, C. Busken, Litterarische fantasien en kritieken. Deel 16 (Haarlem: HD Tjeenk Willink, 1874), p. 113Google Scholar.

106 Alwi, Des, Friends and exiles. A memoir of the Nutmeg Isles and the Indonesian nationalist movement, ed. Harvey, Barbara S (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 2008), p. 67Google Scholar. The significance of the term ‘burgers’ used here in a more contemporary context refers to people of partly European descent from families with a long history in the islands. These included the descendants of old perkenier families, who by the 1930s did not necessarily own or even manage nutmeg estates.

107 This individual, now deceased, has appeared in English and Dutch travel writing where he is often referred to as ‘the last perkenier’.

108 Grimes, ‘Development and use’, p. 119.

109 Contemporary informants are careful to note that this label does not imply that the language is autochthonous (i.e. a bahasa tanah, literally ‘language of the earth’). They suggest it is instead a form of Bahasa Melayu (i.e. ‘Malay’), comparable to but distinct from Bahasa Ambon (‘Ambonese’). The latter is a form of Malay linked to the provincial capital which has become increasingly important as a lingua franca throughout the region. Bandanese are generally fluent in both forms.

110 Craton, Michael, ‘British Caribbean’, in A historical guide to world slavery, ed. Drescher, S. and Engerman, S.L. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), Craton, ‘British Caribbean’, p. 126Google Scholar.

111 Mintz, Sidney W., ‘Enduring substances, trying theories: The Caribbean region as Oikoumenê’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2, 2 (1996): 301Google Scholar.

112 See Fox, James J., ‘Place and landscape in comparative Austronesian perspective’, in The poetic power of place: Comparative perspectives on Austronesian ideas of locality, ed. Fox, James J. (Canberra: Department of Anthropology & Comparative Austronesian Project, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, 1997), pp. 1–21Google Scholar.

113 Alwi, Friends and exiles, p. 54.

114 This was the case until the outbreak of extended inter-communal conflict in the region in 1999, which rapidly incorporated a sectarian dimension. The direct result in the Bandas was the departure of nearly all of the island's Christian minority population. At the time of writing, most had been rehoused in government-built settlements on Ambon. See Winn, Phillip, ‘Violence, sovereignty and moral community in Maluku’, in Beyond Jakarta: Regional autonomy and local society in Indonesia, ed. Sakai, Minako (Adelaide: Crawford house, 2002), pp. 173–95Google Scholar.

115 Collins, James and Kaartinen, Timor, ‘Preliminary notes on Bandanese language maintenance and change in Kei’, Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, 154, 4 (1998): 525Google Scholar.

116 See Medea, Laurent, ‘Creolisation and globalisation in a neo-colonial context: the case of Réunion’, Social Identities, 8, 1 (2002): 125–41Google Scholar; Craton, , ‘British Caribbean’, in A historical guide to world slavery, ed. Drescher, Seymour and Engerman, Stanley L. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 126Google Scholar.

117 Mintz, Sidney W., ‘The localization of anthropological practice. From area studies to transnationalism’, Critique of Anthropology, 18, 2 (1998): 119Google Scholar.

118 Mintz ‘Enduring substances’, p. 302.

119 Ibid.

120 But see also Winn, Phillip, ‘Butonese in the Banda Islands: Departure, mobility and identification’, in Horizons of home: Nation, gender and migrancy in island Southeast Asia, ed. Graham, Penelope (Clayton, Victoria: Monash Asia Institute, 2008), pp. 85–100Google Scholar.

121 Hanna, Indonesia Banda, p. 110.

122 The question of the ‘unfree’ status of indentured labour in Indonesia is still debated among scholars, alongside the historical role such labour plays in the emergence of capitalist forms of production. See for example, Breman, Jan, ‘Review article: New thoughts on colonial labour in Indonesia’, JSEAS, 33, 2 (2002): 333–9Google Scholar, and the reply from Vincent Houben, J.H. and Lindblad, J. Thomas, ‘Correspondence’, JSEAS, 33, 3 (2002): 559–94Google Scholar.

123 Houben, Vincent J.H., ‘Introduction: The coolie system in colonial Indonesia’, in Coolie labour in colonial Indonesia. A study of labour relations in the Outer Islands c. 1900–1940, ed. Houben, Vincent J.H. and Lindblad, J. Thomas (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1999), p. 3Google Scholar.

124 Breman, ‘Review article’, p. 334.

125 Houben, ‘Introduction’, p. 17.

126 J. Thomas Lindblad, ‘New destinations: conditions of coolie labour outside East Sumatra, 1910–1938’, in Coolie labour, ed. Houben and Lindblad, p. 96.

127 Ellen Leenarts, ‘Coolie wages in western enterprises in the Outer Islands, 1919–1938’, in Coolie labour, ed. Houben and Lindblad, p. 150.

128 Lindblad, ‘New destinations’, p. 96; Breman, ‘Review article’ p. 333.

129 Breman, ‘Review article’, p. 334 refers to jual jiwa as an expression used by coolies themselves with reference to the penal sanctions.

130 Narratives of labour recruitment linked to ‘dark practices’ may well be an apt metaphor. Strategies used by colonial labour recruiters commonly involved deceitful pretexts and false promises (including offers of marriage), alongside a host of other ‘irregularities’. See Vincent J.H. Houben, ‘Before departure: Coolie labour recruitment in Java, 1900–1942’, in Coolie labour, ed. Houben and Lindblad, pp. 28–30.

131 The use of the term mir for ‘ant’ is an example of the everyday lexical borrowings from Dutch that help to distinguish Banda Malay as a distinct local variant.

132 Nierop, Trudi, ‘Lonely in an alien world: coolie communities in Southeast Kalimantan in the late colonial period’, in Coolie labour in colonial Indonesia. A study of labour relations in the Outer Islands c. 1900–1940, ed. Houben, V.J.H. and Lindblad, J.T. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1999), p. 173Google Scholar. Nierop points to several factors conspiring to isolate coolie labourers in southeast Kalimantan from local populations, including the restricted movement of contract coolies and segregated housing, which employers were obliged to provide under Coolie Ordinances.

133 These include placing offerings on sites linked to Muslim holy figures and attending prayers led by a local imam.

134 See Fox, James J., ‘Introduction’, in Origins, ancestry and alliance. Explorations in Austronesian ethnography, ed. Fox, James J. and Sather, Clifford (Canberra: Department of Anthropology & Comparative Austronesian Project, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, 1996), pp. 1–17Google Scholar.

135 Goody, ‘Slavery’, p. 42.

136 Mintz, ‘Was the plantation slave’, p. 306.

137 Reid, ‘Introduction’, p. 2.