This book offers a comprehensive account of indentured Chinese labour in
the Dutch East Indies between 1880 and 1942, particularly in its
twilight years after 1917. The author shows that Chinese indenture
started and evolved differently from other forms of bonded labour in
Southeast Asia and globally, including its Indian and Javanese variants.
This difference is reflected in its lexicon, which was in part special
to the Chinese strain. Using fieldwork findings from the tin islands of
Bangka and Belitung and the Deli plantations on Sumatra as well as
archival materials in Dutch, Chinese, and other languages held in
libraries in Java, Nanjing, Taipei, Hong Kong, and Leiden, this book
presents cutting-edge research that sets out to contribute to the
revising of our historical understanding of indenture.