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In the nineteenth century, the Netherlands and its colonial holdings in Java were the sites of dramatically increased industrialization. Led by a group of "merchant kings" who exemplified gentlemanly capitalism, this ambitious trading project transformed the small, economically moribund Netherlands into a global power. Merchant Kings offers a fascinating interdisciplinary exploration of this episode and reveals not only the distinctive nature of the Dutch state, but the surprising extent to which its nascent corporate innovations were rooted in early welfare initiatives. By placing colony and metropole into a single analytical frame, this book offers a bracing new approach to understanding the development of modern corporations.
List of contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Section I: State Formation in the Greater Netherlands Introduction: Corporate Governmentality
Chapter 1. Aristocratic Restoration in the Nineteenth-Century "Greater Netherlands"
Section II: Corporate Governmentality in the Realm of the Merchant-King Chapter 2. Policing the Pauper in the Realm of the Merchant-King
Chapter 3. The Cultivation System
Chapter 4. Manufacturing Commodity Chains: The NHM and Cotton
Chapter 5. "Sweetening the Pot": the Javanese Sugar Industry
Chapter 6. Weaving an Empire: G. & H. Salomonson and the "Social Question"
Section III: The Credit Mobilier and Corporate Assemblage Chapter 7. Political Economy, the "Self-Regulating Market" and "Economic Governance"
Chapter 8. The Credit Mobilier: Constructing an Economic Sovereignty
Chapter 9. The Credit Mobilier and the Railways
Conclusion: Assemblage, Corporatization, and the Government of the Economy
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Albert Schrauwers is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, York University, Toronto. He is the author of “Union is Strength”: W.L. Mackenzie, the Children of Peace and the Emergence of Joint Stock Democracy in Upper Canada (2009) and Colonial “Reformation” in the Highlands of Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, 1892-1995 (2000).
Summary
Offers an interdisciplinary exploration of the rapid industrialization of the Netherlands and its colonial holdings in Java during the nineteenth century. By placing colony and metropole into a single analytical frame, it offers a bracing new approach to understanding the development of modern corporations within the context of empire.
